Honestly I don't care if it's solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, or nuclear, as long as it displaces fossil fuels. And it's feasible on a very near time scale.
If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.
We need an "all of the above" approach. This fight between nuclear and renewables is just stirred up by fossil fuel interests. Either is good. Both is good.
This isn't an "all of the above approach" though, it's a "cancel the short term plans and pretend we're going to do something later" approach.
Yeah, if you decide to ramp up nuclear now, you're only going to see the results in 10 years. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to add wind, solar and stuff like home/grid batteries in the meantime. Pretty sure Sweden has plenty of hydro storage options as well, which can be easily used to regulate the fluctuations wind and solar give you.
Mines take a lot longer than 10 years, as do power-plants (the whole thing starting at permit submission and ending at last reactor coming online). 2045 is optimistic.
Yeah, 10 years was a best case scenario, where you basically already have the plans drawn up and are ready to build. Not sure what your point about mines is, I'm assuming they'd be importing uranium?
Still requires expanding uranium production somewhere, and likely also buying from Russia.
Yeah, the Russia issue is kind of hilarious. You're trying to reduce fossil fuel use so you're not dependent on Russia for energy, so instead you're going to use nuclear, which uses fuel rods almost exclusively refined by Russia.
Not sure if new mining would be needed, but I guess that depends on what happens in Niger.
Sweden has uranium reserves and produced it's own uranium in the 60-s. Though I think laws currently prevent mining.
I'm sure they'll take just as much care for indigenous reindeer herders when choosing where to poison thousands of km^2 of land as they did when using them for hostage shield politics to sabotage the wind rollout.
Or is an entire country supposed to run indefinitely on the single year worth of reserves already known?
Anti nuclear sentiment is pro-fossil fuel. You're inventing problems and prolonging dependance on oil.
Cancelling low carbon energy and making vague promises of spending 10x as much is definitely not a pro fossil fuel move /s
A low carbon energy source is useless if it cannot cover peak loads, which are now being covered by fossil fuels. Years of greenie obstructionism now means that the nuclear plants that would have been built are now missing, and the solutions offered by the anti-nuclear lobby seems to be "let them have energy poverty, brownouts and outright blackouts are not our problem". This will happen once coal and oil plants shut down, renewables alone cannot cover the demands, especially at peak load.
Good thing your straw man isn't what is being suggested by anyone anywhere.
Why are people in this thread acting like the intent here is to cut renewables? The target was deemed unrealisitic to hit andr raised concerns about reliability.
They are simply removing potential future renewables that have not been paid for or even ordered yet from the agenda and replacing the planned supply with nuclear, which is carbon neutral and requires less workers maintaining larger fields of solar and wind, two types of power that are not reliable during a Scandinavian blizzard... Something Sweden has to consider among many other things
I can't find any indication that they're changing their target...it's just going from "100% renewable" to "100% fossil-fuel free".
Sounds like a win-win to me, Outdated Nuclear fission reactors are among the safest and cleanest forms of energy to ever exist, to say nothing of modern designs and theoretical ones that at the bare minimum could fill in the gap until Fusion becomes economically viable or manage some kind of orbital/space based solar collection grid.
Two things that are relevant is that Sweden is very, very dark during the winter which reduces the profitability of solar and also that it's extremely difficult to get approval for wind turbines right now.
Municipalities have the power to veto building projects and almost all of them choose to block wind power installations. Wind turbines generate sound, both audible and infrasound (which can disturb sleep), and are sometimes considered a bit of an eyesore which can both reduce the value of properties near them and make people less inclined to move to that region which reduces tax income for the municipality. This could be offset by taxation of the wind power, but currently all taxable income from wind turbines go to the state instead of any of the local governments.
There was recently an inquiry into how to make municipalities more likely to approve wind power construction and the restriction that the government gave them was that they were not allowed to suggest tax revenue being diverted to the local government. Which was the only suggestion that they said would be effective.
So... yeah.
If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.
Bullshit. Renewables are cheap as chips.
Think of a traditional power plant. There are 4 main cost catagories: Construction, Maintenance, Fuel, Demolition.
In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.
For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more (issues such as remote locations, weather, smaller generators means more generators which increases the mean time to failure) however they have ZERO fuel cost.
Renewable generation is profitable as fuck, moreso than nuclear. Your average wind farm pays itself off in less than 5 years.
This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.
Sweden already has a significant surplus of electricity production, to the degree that we are one of the largest exporters in the EU and have had several bouts of negative spot prices this past summer.
However, we also have an effect deficit for the colder part of the year. Two-thirds of simulations by SVK (our national power distributor) find that the peak-load hour during the winter 26/27 will have a deficit equivalent to three gen-II nuclear reactors running at 100% (10'000MW), and 10 continuous hours of blackouts due to power shortage. This is during the coldest part of the year when solar is ineffective, and additionally is often combined with high-pressure fronts, which means low wind speeds.
In Sweden upwards of 75% of homes get their heating from electricity, and potentially a full day without power in temperatures of beyond -30°C would literally mean people freezing to death.
Our power bill for December was 800€, and we both have geothermal heating and reduced our indoor temperature significantly, averaging 14-18°C indoors for the month. This was more than January, February and March combined. Meanwhile, the bills for all summer months put together (May, June, July and I expect also August) cost less than the bill for April (100€).
The most viable short-term solution they're looking at is (unfortunately) reopening old oil plants from the 60s & 70s however, this might not be possible either, due to newer EU legislations. Bringing them into compliance in time could cost 100's of millions of SEK, which ironically is more than the "prohibitively expensive repairs" that the previous gov:t cited when they shut down 4 nuclear reactors 2015-2020.
Assuming you're telling the truth that there's a massive shortfall in December already (a provable lie ) then you are suggesting the solution for an urgent shortfall of around a TWh per year is to build 10GW of nuclear plants which will be ready in 2045 for €300 billion and run them at an operating loss for 10-11 months per year.
This in order to provide low grade heat which could be stored in a district heating system for a few dollars per kWh for a total cost of about 3% of your suggestion or even in batteries for about 20% of the cost (which would also run at a profit the rest of the year and make the hydro go further).
Nuke shills say some colossally stupid things, but this really takes the cake.
Since you couldn't be arsed to check for yourself before throwing out baseless accusations, here's a translation of a relevant part from the linked article. I doubt you'll read it, but it'll be here for anyone else that stumbles across this thread.
The past winter was at times dramatic, for example when several nuclear power reactors were shut down for repairs. But thanks to the fact that mainly households had previously reduced consumption clearly in step with the rampant electricity prices, Sweden managed to maintain the power balance even in the worst hour, the so-called peak load hour.
"But if we had maintained the consumption, we would have had to cut down.", says Lowina Lundström, Division Manager Systems at Svenska kraftnät.
The electricity had not been enough
At that time, the import would not have been enough to cover the electricity demand during the peak load hour on December 16, 2022, between 09:00 and 10:00. The import was then at a maximum of 3,290 MW, approximately equivalent to three nuclear power reactors, which was the highest level to date.
(Svenska Kraftnät a.k.a Swedish Power Grids is our national power distribution agency)
Btw, your source is 4 years out of date, and accounts for neither daily nor hourly power balance.
Here is an actual relevant source on the topic (again, in Swedish).
The above figure is taken from this report by SVK.
So the problem was nuclear being unreliable, and you can't comprehend the idea of picking the worst recent year before dropping demand due to covid (or clicking on the
year dropdown or hitting the hourly output).
The capacity factor for nuclear power in Sweden (including losses from curtailment) was 83% of installed capacity during 2022, which exceeds the global average for that year (80%), by comparison wind had a capacity factor of 26% for the year. Hence, the issue is not reliability, but rather a lack of capacity. 1700MW (20%) of nuclear has been decommissioned since 2018 (which is why those stats are entirely irrelevant to the current situation). Hence that a the unexpected outage of a single reactor (1160 MW or 17% of total capacity) could have such a large impact.
Even with that outage, nuclear power remained the energy source with the greatest capacity % during the 22/23 winter (80%), despite being lower during peak demand. "Kärnkraft" is nuclear power.
So, in summary, you are either clueless regarding our situation in Sweden (I sincerely hope that is the case) or actively spreading misinformation (which would be the more unfortunate option).
Another bullshit attempt at paltering. Capacity factor isn't reliability. Failing unpredictably when needed and when asserting that it will work then is unreliability. Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.
Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.
Don't put words in my mouth, that is quite rude.
Capacity factor isn’t reliability.
It is a useful comparison figure to examine reliability. Your inability to comprehend the connection clearly highlights your incompetence on the subject.
Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.
Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.
More attempted projection after having your lies pointed out. Pointing out your attempts at disinformation is the opposite. What you are doing is disgusting and intentional.
So, you're no longer arguing the topic but the person, do you have any rebuttal for the facts that they've presented? Any reason why you should be trusted above SVK?
I pointed out your lies and contradictions.
You responded with condescending insults and accusations of ignorance.
For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more
This is less true as time goes on. CCGT and coal has substantial overlap with all-in cost of firmed PV and onshore wind just in terms of capex and FOM. Nuclear O&M overlaps with all-in cost of wind or PV (although not the latter in sweden).
SMRs (most of the proposals to reduce cost) are also substantially less efficient than full sized reactors and the high grade Uranium or Uranium in countries you can pollute without consequence is mostly tapped out so prices are increasing (currently about $3/MWh for full scale or $6/MWh for an inefficient small reactor). By the time an SMR finally comes online, just the raw uranium will cost as much as renewables, let alone the rest of VOM (which is still a minority of O&M which is far, far less than Capex).
Anyone suggesting new nuclear should be regarded as either someone lying to maintain a nuclear weapons program, a scammer, or a russian agent trying to sell dependence on rosatom.
The first is potentially defensible, but they could also not lie instead.
This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.
Simply incorrect and ignorant and I could leave it at that.
But I won't so here:
Nuclear is carbon neutral
The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow
Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance
Current nuclear plants are nearing their end of life and needs to be replaced
I'm not critising nuclear for not being green.
Renewables should grow (they're profitable), but there should be further incentivised growth to help reduce reliance on fossile fuels more quickly.
Yes, nuclear is brilliant for voltage and frequency stability. Large turbines have momentum in their spinning mass, when loads are switched on and off they keep spinning the same speed. However there are other options, eg rotating stabilisers, often used on very large ships but land installations are now being made also. These can be built without the nuclear red tape.
Replacing existing nuclear plants is always a decent thing to do. You skip over many of the hurdles by building on the same site under the same nuclear permits. However taking money away from renewables to pay for this is questionable at best.
I think Sweden does have some geographical complications, along with a lackluster transmission network. These are much harder to get private investment for. However if there was a decent transmission network then there would be more utility of renewable generation in the north as well as the capability for import of energy from neighbouring countries or even export when Sweden has an excess.
Putting my balls on the table, I reckon if Sweden put all the money they've got in nuclear into transmission first and then renewables, I reckon they could switch off more fossil fuels more quickly.
The points I listed are the strongest arguments to expand nuclear power which both the left and right of Riksdagen generally agrees on.
So how this is a right wing conspiracy to further the fossil energy industry as you point out is still to me a mystery, that's all you need to explain.
The fact that left and right wing parties both currently (in the middle of soaring energy prices and a cost of livings crisis) agree with measures that support fossil fuel interests does not change the fact that the Swedish government (which is currently right wing) is implementing policies that benefit the fossil fuel industry.
Also, I question the nuance in that - I'm sure many in the left that support nuclear investment, but are less happy about renewable targets being scrapped.
However I apologise if I came on a bit too hard with it being a left vs right wing issue. It's wealth vs society.
i heard that nuclear still kind of heats up the earth since its not outputting what has been put in by the sun before. Supposedly thats a problem since space is a good insulator.
It's a negligible amount of heat. Something like 0.000001% of the greenhouse effect from fossil fuels. Almost unmeasurable.
have you ever been in Sweden? it is a a rocky mountainous and mostly dark region. they only renewables that they can easily manage is geothermal and iirc they do not have the correct crust for it
According to another comment they have plenty of renewables up in the north but only use about 30% of that capacity. So it seems the main issue is with the transmission network for the country, its ability to get power from one place to another.
Instead of investing in 20 year nuclear power plant plans, they should be looking at accessing and expanding the available renewable generation in the short term.
the wind mills would be in inaccessible areas so you are better to just go with nuclear and invest in transmission from settlement to settlement instead to the turbines
Yeah 100% agree with you. I'm surprised that this is the case given the 2045 time scale but we'll have to wait a couple of decades and see how it pans out I guess.
Imo, renewable should still be the target, nuclear should be the bridge towards renewable until it's feasible enough
Which is exactly what they're doing if you read the article.
Building a stop-gap that will be ready 20 years after you get to the main destination for 10x the price isn't a bright move.
This would be a stronger argument, if it wasn't 20 years old already.
The best time to ignore the nuke shills and build wind and solar was the 1940s when both wind and solar thermal were proven economically and fission hadn't happened yet.
The second best time is now.
The best time to ignore the nuclear scare mongers us whenever they open their ignorant mouths.
You're confusing tired contempt with fear.
No, you definitely have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
I disagree... the biggest "issue" I have with "renewables" is the storage problem.. That 20 years gives you time to figure out something while reducing the carbon output
Battery storage is already cheaper than nuclear.
..no it won't because the new nuclear will generate nothing for 20 years. Whereas the renewables will reduce some carbon, even if we pretend that storage is both unsolvable (as opposed to already cheaper than nuclear) and necessary in a grid that's already 40% hydro.
I don't get why people here are so hyped. Why is it a good thing to completely dump renewables?
It’s just the target being dumped. We can’t go 100% renewable and have nuclear. So by expanding nuclear the target has got to go. Renewables will still be expanded in Sweden.
It means your gas shares will pay dividends for a few extra years.
People here have better reading comprehension apparently and know that dumping a 100% target doesn't mean dumping renewables.
Going 'all in' on something usually means neglecting everything else.
Hell yeah, tell me the best future isn't nuclear power and electric rail like an old space Lego set.
Nuclear's probably not a great long term choice since it's a lot more expensive than renewables.
But that's just the generated per kwh cost, not taking into account when the energy is generated. To compare a full renewables grid to a renewables nuclear mixed grid you need to take into account massive energy storage systems and their inefficiencies and possible material shortages. We can't just compare the currently favorable cost per kwh without taking into account problems as we scale into less reliable energy sources.
You will need long term storage in both cases. Nuclear can't act as a peaker because you can't quickly ramp up or down the generation. Nuclear can only perform as baseload which, in theory, could be provided by a renewable energy mix if the install base is high enough.
I don't disagree with your point that it isn't a simple direct comparison but any sensible energy mix will still require storage. I find it difficult to see the economic case for nuclear if renewables can be installed in sufficient quantities, given that nuclear is roughly 4 times as expensive as solar and wind.
Nuclear can only perform as baseload
That's only true for NPPs built decades ago. Modern designs can also do load-following power. For peaks you have renewables, of course, they complement each other. Diversity makes a healthy grid.
The plants that can allegedly do this almost never do, and most of them have had maintenance issues which cost more to fix than replacing them with renewables.
Modern designs can also do load-following power.
I think this is a maybe in terms of what the grid needs. Will be great if nuclear is built that genuinely supports system demands.
Diversity makes a healthy grid.
Couldn't agree more.
It's good that they can do it. Even better if they don't need to.
Niclear has high investment cost and very low production cost which incentivises runnig at max output for as long as possible. This might block out renewables from the grid if their production cost is higher and make it less profitable to build them. So its really not a Symbiosis between nuclear and regenerative
With 100% renewables you would need almost 100% storage and potentially for multiple days, with a nuclear baseload you'd only need storage for the peaks, you could even use excess renewables to charge up the storage for these peaks.
What do you mean with 100% Storage? And why would you need it for multiple days if you have a grid that transports energy all around the continent and in future possible worldwide?
I guess we can talk about transmission then, yes if you can get enough renewable energy across a continent then in theory you can transmit it to where it is needed, however you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available. The current interconnects can handle an impressive amount of load but you're not going to transmit enough power for all of sweeden from spain. There are some massive transmission projects underway that should help address this but they're still not going to be enough to cover a 100% outage for most places. So a cost analysis would have to be done to determine if massive transmission projects are better than building nuclear plants. Keep in mind, these same transmission lines can transmit nuclear power as well so they should be built regardless of what energy source you use.
What do you mean with 100% Storage?
you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available
can be build faster and cheaper than nuclear, doesn't need fuel and needs to be build anyway.
We get the cheapest, strongest and least dangerous grid if we invest in more renewables, storage and better transmission. And that's something we can get done fast and start harvesting the profits in a few years.
I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I'm not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don't exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we're working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That's not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I'm also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I'll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won't magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we're going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.
This is build faster and with fewer risks than nuclear.
Not sure about the 100% point but you will certainly need long term storage which is an unsolved problem. A point I wanted to make was that with enough renewables installed you have the baseload. You would also have an excess of production at peak times that would be useful to store long term.
My personnal view is that a sensible energy mix should have some nuclear but I don't think it is the key to solving our future energy requirements and should be minimal as it isn't good value.
Entirely unsubstantiated. Renewables require storage only for the peak demands, otherwise, they function as a baseload, provided that there is a sensitive balance of wind and solar power generation installations.
If you want 99.9999% uptime with no backup then the nuclear fleet will need months or years of storage due to the prevalence of correlated unplamned outages.
Back in reality, a good enough renewable system with >95-99% uptime has less than 10% of the storage that will be found in the accompanying country's EV fleet. Even if you are too allergic to nuance to understand the real solution for the remainder, simply planning a renewable rollout and assuming existing fossil fuel peakers for down periods over 12 hours will take 20-100 years to release as much carbon as delaying one of the years waiting for late, over budget nuclear reactors.
Even if you are too allergic to nuance to understand the real solution
And thus you have shown that your mind is made up and no amount of evidence will sway your decisions. Good day.
I'm plenty open to evidence, it's just every time I look at some it shows a new lie that nukebros tell. Every single talking point isnutter bullshit to the pooint where if you look it up you find that nukes are significantly worse by whatever hair-splitting metric is being used ti try and distract from their main downsides.
There is a fully renewable solution for the 2-5 >100 hour events a year where battery storage is unsuitable, but it requires holding more than one thought in your head at a time (thermal storage, dispatchable load and w2e is one combo).
l'm plenty open to evidence, it's just every time I look at some it shows a new lie that nukebros tell.
That's not very open minded. I'm all for vetting your sources and skepticism, but going in with your mind made up is close minded.
it requires holding more than one thought in your head at a time
Look my dude, you're clearly here to fight not discuss, and that's fine we absolutely need to fight against the establishment, activisim is important. Fighting against your allies is a pro gamer move though.
That last bit is the rub though. I'm fighting to decarbonize and reduce exploitation kf resource rich countries and you're fighting to stop it.
The constant tirade of insane lies is tolerable. Pretending you're not on the side of fossil fuels is the incredibly insulting bit.
No, the insulting bit is youd constant tirade of insane lies, buttercup.
France, with all it's maintainance disasters with their nuclear reactors shows us yet another problem: how to properly cool the water for the generator? With sinking fresh-water levels in rivers and fastly rising water temperatures nuclear reactors become less reliable. Wind and solar output on the other side will in an ironical way get a little more reliable, as there will be more of both.
One of the biggest problems that we have today when it comes to energy production (and a whole lot of other things) is putting all our eggs in one basket. Well how the fuck does this change anything?
I am not anti-nuclear, but dumping ALL renewable targets is moronic. Now you've simply replaced one egg for another egg, but it's still just ONE egg. A stable energy portfolio is diversifying your sources.
The article doesn't say if they intend to have 100% nuclear or if they dropped the target of 100% renewable to have a mix with more nuclear
Great observation 👍 could well be a misleading title
Dosent sweden already have a fairly high and fairly stable energy production through their hydroelectiric power plants . Wouldnt it be better to just build more of those.
I’m not sure the situation in Sweden, but usually the easily developed hydro sites have already been built, and any remaining sites will be quite expensive compared to power generated. Additionally, climate change can threaten the reliability of hydro as snowmelt and precipitation become more unpredictable. Also, they generally have a fairly large negative environmental impact aside from climate change.
I’m sure there are some projects that will pencil out but probably not enough to decarbonize the whole energy grid.
Yeah afaik there are a couple of suitable places for more hydropower but no plans for more due to, like you said, local environmental reasons.
That said, sweden is basically already completely "decarbonized" (if anything can really be decarbonized), we only have a reserve oil powerplant that runs for maybe a couple of days each year (~9 days last year, though last year was especially bad). Sweden also generally has a pretty big net surplus (usually about 10-20% of production) of green power that is sold to the european grid.
We do, but enviromental regulations pushed through during the past two decades is essentially preventing any new or expanded hydro projects. In fact, a lot of smaller hydro plants are instead being demolished due to being incompatible with these laws.
What? They are demolishing hydro plants? Do you have a source for that?
Below is a news article from Swedish Television (SVT) translated to english using LLM. Couldn't find it in english. Original article
New Stringent Environmental Requirements Threaten Small Hydropower Plants
Published on May 10, 2022
Over a 20-year period, around 1,800 small hydropower plants in Sweden are set to have their conditions re-evaluated by the land and environmental courts to ensure they meet the requirements of the EU's Water Framework Directive. According to hydropower plant owners, these evaluations entail strict demands and increased costs that threaten the existence of culturally significant small hydropower plants.
Located along the Alsterån River in Nybro Municipality, one of Magnus Edvinsson's hydropower plants has been in operation since the 1800s. He, like many other owners of small hydropower plants, is facing upcoming re-evaluations of environmental conditions to determine if they comply with environmental legislation.
According to Magnus Edvinsson, the measures and court costs could spell the end for many small hydropower plants.
"We've seen costs of 10 million Swedish Kronor for a single small hydropower plant. That completely shatters the economy of a company like this," he explains.
Ensuring Fish Passage
The aim is to establish modern environmental conditions for all watercourses in Sweden. This includes promoting biological diversity, which might involve requirements for fish passages to be built, allowing aquatic organisms to move freely in the waterways.
The Water Authorities have determined that each water body must achieve good ecological status. According to Magnus Edvinsson, the environmental quality standard imposes excessively high demands and could result in costly reconstruction efforts.
"In our industry organization, we've already received indications that 30 percent of the small hydropower plant owners in the initial review group are considering dismantling their facilities even before the court review takes place. It's not unlikely that it could reach up to 50 percent choosing to decommission once they are in court. It's a shocking figure, and this is happening at the same time as we are experiencing the worst energy crisis in modern history," says Magnus Edvinsson.
10 reactors? How long is that gonna take to build? A single reactor can take at least 8 years. So hopefully they aren’t ditching renewables all together. You can build a lot of solar and wind farms in those 8 years.
This is exactly the issue. Nuclear is necessary in the long term for a clean grid, however it will take much longer than as well as take investment away from renewable projects - which could achieve net zero more quickly than nuclear.
We should be going hard on current renewable technology, build out a massive excess (to account for reduced generation, the wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun shines throguh the clouds), and then once we have met all our energy needs from clean energy and phased out fossil fuels we can focus on fortifying the grid - in particular at that point we will need large turbines with lots of rotating mass, for voltage and frequency stability, which is a perfect role for nuclear to fulfill.
One of the problems that we have is that a big chunk of the country for a month don't have a single ray of sunshine due to polar nights. The problem is that that is when it's complete darkness leading up to the point and going out of it takes time as well so solar is not an option at that time of the year. On top of that most of the land is "disputed" by indigenous people (don't mark my words it's a very touchy subject I don't know how to express it better) or it's a nature reserve area so wind farms are out of the question. So the only thing we have left is hydropowered electricity which isn't clean at all as it destroys the natural course of the river up stream, destroys the river beds down stream and extremely reduces the fish populations as well as any greenery relying on the reliability of the rivers.
With that said if we simplify it a bit about 46% of Swedens total energy production comes from the northern hydroelectric plants and wind farms and because of lacking infrastructure it can't be transferred efficiently to southern Sweden where most of the consumption is happening. Of these 46% about only 30% is currently used but more companies have decided to establish their production in thr northern region due to the surplus of energy in this region.
Southern Sweden on the other hand gets a lot of their energy from unreliable wind farms as well as nuclear energy. However due to the layout of the land hydroelectric is only viable in some places which have already been exploited. We can only install so many wind farms until it affects quality of life to the people and animals living nearby. On a good day southern Sweden is having a net zero energy production and consumption. Those days are fewer and further in between. Currently since closing a reactor two years ago we have had to reinstate an oil burning facility as well as buying unclean electricity from abroad to keep up with demand.
So investing in nuclear to stabilise the production is one of very few options we currently have.
It's either that or moving either part of the population or factories to the northern part which is not really viable or sustainable eitherm
It sounds like the biggest issue is transmission, you need high capacity transmission lines between the north and south. That way, you could not only use more than the 30% currently, but expand that capacity. Also, transmission between neighbouring countries could help.
Currently we sell the surplus in the north to Finland and Norway as well as to Denmark and Germany in the south when we are over capacity.
What we would need is a better connection between north and south but that hasn't been a priority until now and it's 30 years too late.
What we would need is a better connection between north and south but that hasn’t been a priority until now and it’s 30 years too late.
The best time to plant a tree..
Nuclear takes a hell of a lot of subsidised state money, and that pot of money only ever grows. Renewables don't need state money, they're profitable on their own. Renewables will grow readily if the transmission infrastructure is there, and moreso if the planning process capacity is expanded (hire more civil servants), let alone if rates were subsidised anywhere near the same level as nuclear.
The best case scenario would be the government itself building state-owned renewable infrastructure, where the profit from selling cheap electricity on the commercial market would come directly back to the community. Most wind farms are owned by one company and managed & operated by another, with the turbine manufacturer providing turbine services. There's no reason the government couldn't be the owning company.
Funnily enough, projects for green steel and the construction of new massive factories in Northern Sweden mean that the power surplus is expected to be gone by 2030. We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.
We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.
Exactly. We need it quickly.
Renewables are here now and can be deployed quickly. Nuclear takes time and is often heavily delayed and over budget.
We need nuclear as well, but we need renewables first, to build capacity as quickly as possible. We need a huge excess of renewable capacity, to account for times when the full capacity isn't available. We shouldn't expect to be using the full capacity at any time.
Once we've phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.
Care to elaborate on this?
Once we’ve phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.
The two largest economies with the low reliance on fossil fuels for energy (Sweden & France) get significant portions of their energy production from nuclear power. Iceland relies on geothermal, and the others (Tajikistan, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Norway) have lots of hydro capacity, which are all excellent, but also largely dependent on geography.
I don't have figures to hand, but I'd gladly dig into them with you, if you have suggestions.
Sweden does have some amount of fossil fuel generation. The article claims 3 nuclear plants provide 30% of the country's needs right now, and says the target being set is for 10 new nuclear plants over the next 20 years. In 2045 (~20 years), demand is predicted to be double that of today.
If we assume all current nuclear plants will close and all new plants will be 20% larger, that means these 10 new nuclear plants will fulfill 60% of predicted demand in ~2045. Again, I'm happy to review actual numbers - I imagine most if not all of these 10 plants are at least in early design proposal stages, so there are some actual MW numbers to be crunched.
I think keeping Sweden's nuclear at about 30-40%, while investing more into a large excess of renewables, would allow fossil fuels to be switched off more quickly. This would still mean investment and growth in nuclear, with maybe 5 or 6 plants (if the 3 existing plants have to close), but would get rid of fossil fuels more quickly.
In maybe 10 years' time, with fossil fuels well and truly on their way out, that would be a better time to expand nuclear.
Our world in data has excellent stats on the topic, and I am quite familiar with the electricity production of Sweden (my home country). Excepting 2003 and 2010 (both quite cold winters) the share of electricity from fossil fuel sources has been sub 5% since 1997. Thus, for my own country I tend to look more at the share of all energy that comes from fossil fuels (currently 26%) rather than just electricity, but below is a chart detailing the shares of electricity produced by each category.
As you can see, investments in wind have been massive, adding 30 TWh of production (~15%) since 2010. However, in the meantime, nuclear energy has not only been neglected, but actively dismantled. Since 2010, some 15 TWh of production has been removed from the grid. Whilst this isn't an issue in isolation, import demands for electricity from continental Europe have increased noticeably during the same time period. In 2010, we had net 0 power flow, whilst 2021 saw a net export of ~16TWh (mainly to a country that completely dismantled their fleet of nuclear reactors instead of their coal power plants and shall not be named)
What this means is that in a decade, with a population increase of 10% and a GDP increase of 20%, electricity availability has actually declined, which is becoming a serious problem now that some of the most energy intensive areas of society are starting to electrify in earnest (transports and heavy industries).
Green steel is the perfect dispatchable load. The steps up until sponge iron require very little capex, with the input costs being driven by energy price it is a far better match for renewables.
Same goes for high temperature electrolysis.
The resulting iron stores 2-8kWh/kg with nothing more than a box as infrastructure (and maybe some oil or nitrogen to stop rust).
Both are so ideal as dispatchable loads that iron js seriously being considered as a fuel/energy carrier instead of hydrogen.
Then run the arc furnaces which are higher capex and labour cost but a fifth of the energy at a constant rate.
The idea of buildkng nuclear to run green steel is utterly deranged.
They are though. Focus on fossil fuels now and promise nuclear later - thats the plan.
Hopefully not as long as offshore wind farms. If Swedish laws regarding os wind are similar to Danish, it'll easily take 9-10 years from decision to actually begin building.
Swede here.
Just clarifying some things.
Sweden is not dropping renewable energy. We are (at least for now) going to include nuclear energy among the other alternatives such as water, wind and solar.
But here's one of the problems we are trying to solve with nuclear power:
Sweden is a major producer of high quality steel and we have set a target to become CO2 free in 2045 when it comes to steel production.
Currently the steel production in Sweden is responsible for 5500000 metric tons of CO2 per year and we have plans to go 0 CO2 by 2045.
To be able to do this we need, just for the CO2 free steel production, 70 TWh per year.
In 2020 there were 4333 wind turbines 26TW of electricity in Sweden.
While you might think that we'd just build 9000 more it will not likely not solve the main problem with wind and solar power production: reliability.
So either we continue using fossil fuel to produce steel or we don't. It's as easy as that.
A low carbon energy source is useless if it cannot cover peak loads, which are now being covered by fossil fuels. Years of greenie obstructionism now means that the nuclear plants that would have been built are now missing, and the solutions offered by the anti-nuclear lobby seems to be "let them have energy poverty, brownouts and outright blackouts are not our problem". This will happen once coal and oil plants shut down, renewables alone cannot cover the demands, especially at peak load.
Peaker technology is best replaced by batteries. Powerwalls and V2G has already been shown to dramatically reduce brownouts and need for Peakers. You need to educate yourself a bit. It’s not 1995 anymore.
Such an absolutely brainless response. Of course renewables alone can cover the demands, and they're our only option since nuclear energy is inherently dangerous, extremely expensive and damaging to the environment and climate due to the immense amounts of concrete required. Furthermore, grid-level storage is a made up problem with regard to renewables, we could easily cover peak demands by expanding hydroelectric pump storage systems and reservoirs, and potential new battery solutions would make this even less of an expense.
Climate harm is a matter of degrees, I think.
Why isn't a few tons of concrete worth eliminating so many emissions?
If you're going to claim a response is brainless you should at least try not Maki a brainless response yourself. Nuclear isn't inherently dangerous, and is better for the environment in the long term.
i like these comments. just have to read the first sentence to know when the blud has knocked himself out of the conversation.
Downvote me all you want but nuclear is not a long term solution. Short term at best.
It's relatively clean compared to fossil fuels but it has several critical flaws on the long term.
For starters, it produces extremely toxic waste which we have no idea how to get rid of besides burying it and forget about it. Everytime someone mentions this all we hear is "we can create x method to dispose of it cleanly". Right, but while we develop X method that shit keeps piling up. And when X method fails to work as we intended "oh, well, just keep bury it and lets start thinking about Y".
And the biggest problem is this. Nuclear is actually relatively safe since the security regulations are (or should) be very strict. But all it takes is one bad enough disaster. Disasters like Chernobyl had the potential to leave half of Europe inhabitable for centuries. But, hey, as long as the regulations are strict and we have equipment and procedures that manage the human error we would be fine, right? Not really. Murphy's law. The worst scenario will happen eventually. A obscure bug in the security systems, an unexpected natural disaster, war or terrorism. There's always a failure point. In other energy types, we can manage that risk. One very rare disaster is not enough to make it not worth it if the good outweights the bad. Not in nuclear energy. Only one disaster can be potentially catastrophic and outweight all the good it made for decades or even centuries.
On the long term it is just not worth it. On the short term...it's a gamble.
You are clueless about how nuclear wastes or radiation work. Any oil tanker sinking is a worst disaster than the worst nuclear accident ever was. A nuclear power plant is not a bomb. Radiations are not a magic disaster that erase life.
Meanwhile co2 is an actual life extinction threat, and Germany opened coal power plant to compensate for nuclear energy. What a great move ecologists! Bravo !
What does a sinking oil tanker have to do with anything? That’s just whataboutism. Nuclear waste, nuclear disasters and sinking oil tankers are all bad.
“Radiations” can absolutely “erase life”. You don’t think radiation can kill living things? That statement makes it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Besides, It takes 10-15 years to make a new nuclear power plant. If you really care about sinking oil tankers and climate change you’d realize that we don’t have that much time.
Germany did nothing but burn coal and gas in 20 years since they've decided to leave nuclear energy. Is that your plan?
Radiations don't erase life. Beaches would be full of dead bodies otherwise and you wouldn't eat bananas. You have no clue about radioactivity obviously so you might as well trust people who do.
"Radiations"
Ahahahah!
Regardless of how wise it is to use nuclear energy, we can all deduce, from your replies, that you know jack shit about what "radiations" actually is.
Is that something about how English language is so specific? It always come back to that when facts can't be disproven.
Then please illuminate how high energy radiation is not dangerous. I do not believe that you can do that, as you appear to never have attended a physics or biology class in your life
Germany did nothing in the last 20 years? Are you high. Did you even think about looking up how the energy production changed during that time?
Any oil tanker sinking is a worst disaster than the worst nuclear accident ever was
You are delusional.
A nuclear power plant is not a bomb
I never said it was. A nuclear disaster is much worse than a bomb on the long term. A bomb causes immediate destruction and fallout which clears in a few years at most. A bomb like Hiroshima, which is by atomic bomb standards a very "dirty" bomb, gave a radiation dosage of about 360 mSv to survivors 1 mile from the epicenter. The radiation went down to 1/1000 in 24 hours and 1/1000 of that within a week.
Chernobyl firemen received 37 times the same dosage and the core kept emitting radiation to this day (though slowly diminishing) hence the sarcophagus.
Hiroshima was never even abandoned after the bombing. It is a thriving city today. Chernobyl and the surrounding regions had tp be evacuated and its access is restricted to this day. In the Russian invasion you had soldiers dying because they digged in contaminated soil. The melted core is, to this day, emitting deadly radiation and only the sarcophagus stops that poison from spreading. And it could've been much worse. And it will stay this way for centuries or even millenia. A breach in the sarcophagus is enough reason for panic. This was ONE disaster.
The current climate crisis is the result of over a century of CO2 emissions and multiple disasters. Chernobyl was just one and had the potential to turn half a continent uninhabitable. How many would we need to turn the planet into a wasteland in the immediate future?
I'm all to take measures to keep global warming in check but lets not burn the house down because the plumbing is not working.
You have 0 clue about radioactivity, how dangerous it is, how it works or even what it is. You are comically ignorant! You'll certainly tell me that chernobyl killed more people than Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs now?
Everyone needs its scarecrow I guess. Beware of bananas btw, those things are radioactive too.
You failed to address any of my arguments. You only attacked me and put words in my mouth. I see no point to keep answering you.
Boi you're the proverbial pigeon shitting on a chessboard.
Bananas are not radioactive, as they do not contain a significant amount of radioisotopes that emit high energy ionising electromagnetic radiation or alpha/beta decay products.
Ignorance again! Or is it hypocrisy? What is significant? What is radioactive?
It is probably the only thing that can really buy us time. Sure we cannot dispose of its waste currently, but it buys us time to find a way. We will find a way to solve the waste issue. Besides, the waste produced is actually quite little, and we do have great solutions for storage. As for your second point, Chernobyl could have been an even worse disaster indeed, but it is a plant built in a time when it was fashionable to built bigger and larger plants. Today, the strategy is to built the plants smaller, making the impact of such disaster also smaller.
It is probably the only thing that can really buy us time
That's the only way it would make sense as a solution. It's a gamble, but it's a risk worth taking in the short term. But that only works with already built reactors.
We will find a way to solve the waste issue
"we will", but we haven't. We're creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.
Today, the strategy is to built the plants smaller, making the impact of such disaster also smaller.
Still potentially catastrophic in a perfect storm. Remember Chernobyl had multiple reactors (who kept functioning) after the disaster. That was only one. I don't think downsizing would solve the risk but I hope I'm mistaken. Remember how we went into panic when the Russians entered Chernobyl or whenever we see news about Zaporozhia?
We haven't seen yet the worst possible nuclear energy disaster. I fear we might not see many...
Just to refute a simple statement for you, please stop spreading disinformation.
“we will”, but we haven’t. We’re creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.
Nuclear waste is solved. Probably one of the most solved kinds of waste on the planet, unlike the waste your smartphone or pc will become in a few years.
Video Essay for your education, better than anything I could write up in five minutes.
For those advocating an all renewable energy grid. You cannot reliably power big industrial factories and infrastructure with renewables only. The answer NEEDS to be: nuclear as a base, and a heavy push towards decentralized renewable grid on top.
You can if you spend times on batteries/energy storage. The question is where the trade off is optimal.
Didn't expect the current government to get something right. The funny thing about the right is that they at least support nuclear. Probably for the wrong reasons.
People are too optimistic about renewables. The world has a limited supply and if the richer countries keep competing over it when will the poorer nations ever get the chance to ditch their coal and oil?
How many countries have invested into production vs just out buying the poorer countries?
The intermediate solution to our problems will be a mix of nuclear and renewables. Being so against nuclear despite our massive issues with climate is a nice gamble people take on other people's future.
We are both far from meeting current electricity demand even in the richest nations and switching away from oil in transport. We need multiple solutions. And as we have seen from the current energy crisis in Europe, no government or population is willing to have a discontinuous energy supply, something common in most renewables.
The world has a "limited supply" of renewables? I am sorry, but are you out of your mind? With renewables, we literally only passively use what the environment already provides. The sun radiates its light toward us for free endlessly and does not care for what we do, and the kinetic energy of the Earth's winds that we use for power generation would otherwise destroy many livelihoods as deadly hurricanes or similar. We have a virtually unlimited supply of these sources, and renewables ARE the key to a greater autonomy of lesser developed countries, just BECAUSE they do not require the import or expensive extraction of fuel resources such as coal, oil or uranium. In fact, nuclear power plants are even more prone to a loss of geopolitical autonomy because of the need for uranium, which is costly to enrich and which you cannot get from everywhere. So, in summary, the situation is the exact opposite of what you've written.
Hard to take you seriously when you start your post misinterpreting my post to such an extent. The sun doesn't produce electricity. The electricity we get from the sun is very much a limited supply. I'll just assume the rest of your post is pointless to read.
Here's me thinking I'd left the nuclear shills behind on Reddit. Nuclear is expensive, takes forever to build, and produces unacceptable waste. Renewables are much cheaper and MUCH quicker to implement.
LFTR when 😭
When the words "experimental nuclear reactor being built near you" doesn't attract massive groups of protesters fueled by the coal companies, allowing for the tech to actually be built and tested
At least I hope they have the good sense to build the plants somewhere relatively remote, just in case of a leak.
It's sweden, if you pick locations randomly, chances are on your side that it'll be insanely remote.
Good to know! That means plenty of places that could be cordoned off in case of a Fukushima, right?
Tell me you know nothing about nuclear science without telling me
(Simpsons doesn't count as a credible source)
I'm surprised to see so many people eagerly dismissing the chance of a nuclear reactor leak, even by accident.
And what are those chances may I ask?
Its like comparing a 1970's shitbox car to a 2022 model and saying all cars are immediately gonna kill us.
Really don't think any nuclear reactor leaks are not accidents, hence why we have such amazing tech to stop it
Chances of a leak are roughly 100%
Most sites are unusable for a few decades due to tritium leaks.
Chances of an economy-destroying disaster on the other hand are much lower, but you didn't ask that.
Odds of a leak are what?? Give me some of whatever youre smoking, unless you mean some backass "technically they leak runoff water" bs, cause reactors are currently the safest way to generate power, even beating the insanely small dangers of solar (which due to production requires more overall human risk)
Chances of an economy-destroying disaster on the other hand are much lower, but you didn’t ask that.
Also now you're lying again with that second sentence. For no benefit whatsoever, as well. This is also a 100% consistent pattern with nuke shills.
Fucking idiots.
Good
Nuclear and Renewables are incompatible. One has to go in a grid.
Interesting read. To anyone interested, the original article can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00696-3
Also note there is a critical re-analysis posted in 2022 reporting some other results, and a reply from the original author again.
Former Nuclear Leaders: Say ‘No’ to New Reactors
The former heads of nuclear power regulation in the U.S., Germany, and France, along with the former secretary to the UK’s government radiation protection committee, have issued a joint statement that in part says, “Nuclear is just not part of any feasible strategy that could counter climate change.”
Finally! Some countries are starting to make rational decisions!
fucking based
tf wrote that title.. nuclear is defacto renewable
No, it's zero emission but not renewable.
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source. Even coal and oil are renewable on long enough time scales. But there will never be more uranium than there is right now.
We actually don't have that much of it if we consider the long term future, only a thousand years or so. So nuclear is intended to be a bridge to eventual full renewable power generation and storage, an essential component in the present day but it's still a bridge.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear is the only power source that works in deep space away from the Sun. So if we're serious about exploring the solar system or further, we'd be best not to burn up all of our fissionable material right away.
Coal exist in the earth because back then the bacteria who could break down lignin and cellulose hadn’t evolved, so dead trees had the time they needed to compress.
There are such bacteria around now, though, and that means there will never be any new natural coal.
The process to produce coal is known for 100 years now. Its just not feasible, because no one needs coal. But its reversible. No one knows how to fuse uranium.
We actually know how. It's the cycle of thorium. You make U233 from Th232.
I wouldn't necessarily say never, it could potentially happen that a dead tree ends up in an environment that isn't conducive to lignin-eating bacteria getting to it, and I would not be at all surprised if it has happened and may continue to happen somewhere in the world since those bacteria evolved, though they would certainly be exceptional cases and almost definitely not happening at any significant scale.
It's also possible for those bacteria to go extinct one way or another. Again, not very likely. And if it did happen it would probably be due to some absolutely catastrophic disaster absolutely wrecking the Earth's ecosystem completely in which case we're probably not going to make it either, but hey, new coal!
Its not even zero emission...
What are the emissions, aside from waste heat?
The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.
Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.
if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.
Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined
Not true, the newest solar panels don't need rare earths at that scale.
and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced.
Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous... The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.
Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)
This data is old as hell... Especially regarding technology that changes twice a year...
Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.
Because renewables don't change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn't involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s
Solar requires 0 rare earths, troll.
Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.
Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.
Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.
The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.
You're sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.
iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths
In the last 10-15 years they've moved to more abundant materials
When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
I'm a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.
You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive...
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
Depends, newer version of the stuff don't need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.
I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be "effective" 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.
Okay.
Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.
Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.
Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.
The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.
Your materials can be recycled after.
The ground around the mine isn't poisoned with heavy metals permanently,
This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.
The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).
Transport, and the building are negligible enough they're not worth considering.
In either case, it's largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.
have you seen how large wind turbines are ?
I have like 20 in visible range from my window, yes, whats your point?
how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.
Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.
wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?
Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the "representative" lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.
Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn't stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.
Thanks
Read the other comments explaining it.
Most of those costs are similar for renewables...rather than a building it's the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.
In both cases I'm pretty sure it's a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.
The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.
Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.
And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don't even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.
Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.
Seaside reactors have other problems like rising Sea levels... Just putting some wind turbines up would not lead to another Chernobyl when something bad happens...
Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.
Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂
And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can't run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.
Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country's power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.
Sweden?
Drought?
Anyway I'm not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won't pretend to know what the best path is. I'm just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.
But even if they're not, it's good they're moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.
Well no, that's the thing. They've replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they're going to in 2045
Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.
Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source
But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable
The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.
And there's a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?
A bit of a stretch maybe, but I'm considering us to be discussing whether an energy source is renewable on Earth. The Sun is not renewable, but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well! So as long as the Earth exists, I would say that solar PV and other solar driven processes like wind and hydro are renewable.
By these standards yes, deep geothermal and tidal are "not renewable" either.
but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well
But that's exactly the "problem", there's enough fertile material for potential millions of years of consumption, and that's for fission alone.
I think the debacle is more because the definition of "renewable" is a little arbitrary than the dilemma if nuclear is renewable or not
I think we both agree on fertile material as discussed in another comment, the longevity issue is mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly.
I'm just being pedantic about the sun, lol
mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly
Well, yes, the obvious counter argument being that, you will never build more advanced reactors on scale (some are already available), or develop new fuel cycle if you stunt the evolution process and block the technology we already have.
Imagine saying to be favourable to installing solar panels but only when they will be 100% recyclable and with efficiency close to the theorical maximum
This would be relevant if any reactor had ever gotten its energy from primarily from fertile material. None have so it is not.
We would if ecologist weren't shutting down any research on this subject.
"It wouldn't have bankrupted every program that tried if you'd just let us fill every body of water with lethal levels of Pu240, Cs137 and Tc99" isn't a great counter argument.
That's look like not renewable, but like "smaller resources cost".
Fission and fusion are two different things.
A thousand years is a massive over-estimate. Providing the 6TW or so of final energy with the stuff assumed to exist that's vaguely accessible for costs that don't exceed renewables' total cost is well under a decade.
No breeding program has ever done a full closed cycle and even if it were to happen, the currently proposed technologies only yield about 50 years.
"Renewable" typically means renewable on human time scales, so fossil fuels don't count.
Biofuel would be renewable.
If you consider fusion to be "nuclear", that's renewable. But yeah, not fission.
I'm sorry what? How do you renew fissile material?!?
It's a little bit complicated and I don't want to write a wall of text but:
Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.
The argument being, if you consider the word "renewable" in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc.
The common usage of renewable is along the line of "immensely big proportional to human consumption" and in this sense there's a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.
Calling an LWR renewable because somebody somewhere might run a closed fuel cycle eventually is like calling oil renewable because you can make hydrocarbons by electrolyzing CO2 and water.
It's and absurd and ridiculous lie.
With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)
Except it has happened at least once at >99% yield.
Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we're basically done and there's absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s
You're now trying to misdirect with an unrelated statistic. The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
Breeding some fissile fuel is not closing the fuel cycle. No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on. Closed cycle nuclear is not even proof of concept.
The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn't the amount reprocessable either.
But to adhere to your argument, it's the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn't an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it's called being out of market, not market saturation.
In reality we aren't recycling solar panels.
No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel.
You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing.
Arguably there's no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
You've now switched from closed cycle to using the dregs via reprocessing. Entirely unrelated concepts (and reprocessing is also ecologically awful and uneconomical in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining).
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled.
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there’s no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX. MOX-2 has never happened.
You cannot even keep your bizarre straw man tangent straight.
Entirely unrelated concepts
A closed cycle require reprocessing, how else would you recover fissile content in exhaust fuel? Magic?
in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining
Because of the low fissile content. Still 20% net reduction in virgin uranium
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We'll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX
This sentence doesn't make sense whatsoever, MOX-2 isn't even a thing that exist, you've just made it up...
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We’ll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
No, because there is a specific piece of legislation mandating it, a clear well costed industrial plan, and idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out.
What you've done is the "nothing can ever start happening more than it is now" fallacy which nuke shills love to roll out.
Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238 is a very good way of demonstrating that you actually understand reprocessing /s
Unfortunately most reactors are not breeders and we are trying our best to lock the waste away forever which ruins any chance of recovery when we finally do migrate to breeder cycles. I like to compare our current reactors to burning just the bark off of logs and then tossing the rest in a smoldering heap, with 95-99% of the energy still retained in the waste.
Breeder reactors would indeed extend the long term viability of nuclear fission immensely, we should be using them exclusively.
you do not need a breeder to recycle most of it. also that 95% is still there for future us to use when we are able to.
No it's not. That's just delusional. All the ideas of a sustainable uranium fuel cycle are based on non-existent technology. Uranium is a finite resource and we have nowhere near enough of it to power the world, even if you ignore all the other problems.
there is enough U238 to last until we get there. except if you think fusion is more than 500 years away (yes, that number is out of my ass)
Honestly I don't care if it's solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, or nuclear, as long as it displaces fossil fuels. And it's feasible on a very near time scale.
If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.
We need an "all of the above" approach. This fight between nuclear and renewables is just stirred up by fossil fuel interests. Either is good. Both is good.
This isn't an "all of the above approach" though, it's a "cancel the short term plans and pretend we're going to do something later" approach.
Yeah, if you decide to ramp up nuclear now, you're only going to see the results in 10 years. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to add wind, solar and stuff like home/grid batteries in the meantime. Pretty sure Sweden has plenty of hydro storage options as well, which can be easily used to regulate the fluctuations wind and solar give you.
Mines take a lot longer than 10 years, as do power-plants (the whole thing starting at permit submission and ending at last reactor coming online). 2045 is optimistic.
Yeah, 10 years was a best case scenario, where you basically already have the plans drawn up and are ready to build. Not sure what your point about mines is, I'm assuming they'd be importing uranium?
Still requires expanding uranium production somewhere, and likely also buying from Russia.
Yeah, the Russia issue is kind of hilarious. You're trying to reduce fossil fuel use so you're not dependent on Russia for energy, so instead you're going to use nuclear, which uses fuel rods almost exclusively refined by Russia.
Not sure if new mining would be needed, but I guess that depends on what happens in Niger.
Sweden has uranium reserves and produced it's own uranium in the 60-s. Though I think laws currently prevent mining.
I'm sure they'll take just as much care for indigenous reindeer herders when choosing where to poison thousands of km^2 of land as they did when using them for hostage shield politics to sabotage the wind rollout.
Or is an entire country supposed to run indefinitely on the single year worth of reserves already known?
Anti nuclear sentiment is pro-fossil fuel. You're inventing problems and prolonging dependance on oil.
Cancelling low carbon energy and making vague promises of spending 10x as much is definitely not a pro fossil fuel move /s
A low carbon energy source is useless if it cannot cover peak loads, which are now being covered by fossil fuels. Years of greenie obstructionism now means that the nuclear plants that would have been built are now missing, and the solutions offered by the anti-nuclear lobby seems to be "let them have energy poverty, brownouts and outright blackouts are not our problem". This will happen once coal and oil plants shut down, renewables alone cannot cover the demands, especially at peak load.
Good thing your straw man isn't what is being suggested by anyone anywhere.
Why are people in this thread acting like the intent here is to cut renewables? The target was deemed unrealisitic to hit andr raised concerns about reliability.
They are simply removing potential future renewables that have not been paid for or even ordered yet from the agenda and replacing the planned supply with nuclear, which is carbon neutral and requires less workers maintaining larger fields of solar and wind, two types of power that are not reliable during a Scandinavian blizzard... Something Sweden has to consider among many other things
I can't find any indication that they're changing their target...it's just going from "100% renewable" to "100% fossil-fuel free".
Sounds like a win-win to me, Outdated Nuclear fission reactors are among the safest and cleanest forms of energy to ever exist, to say nothing of modern designs and theoretical ones that at the bare minimum could fill in the gap until Fusion becomes economically viable or manage some kind of orbital/space based solar collection grid.
Two things that are relevant is that Sweden is very, very dark during the winter which reduces the profitability of solar and also that it's extremely difficult to get approval for wind turbines right now.
Municipalities have the power to veto building projects and almost all of them choose to block wind power installations. Wind turbines generate sound, both audible and infrasound (which can disturb sleep), and are sometimes considered a bit of an eyesore which can both reduce the value of properties near them and make people less inclined to move to that region which reduces tax income for the municipality. This could be offset by taxation of the wind power, but currently all taxable income from wind turbines go to the state instead of any of the local governments.
There was recently an inquiry into how to make municipalities more likely to approve wind power construction and the restriction that the government gave them was that they were not allowed to suggest tax revenue being diverted to the local government. Which was the only suggestion that they said would be effective.
So... yeah.
Bullshit. Renewables are cheap as chips.
Think of a traditional power plant. There are 4 main cost catagories: Construction, Maintenance, Fuel, Demolition.
In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.
For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more (issues such as remote locations, weather, smaller generators means more generators which increases the mean time to failure) however they have ZERO fuel cost.
Renewable generation is profitable as fuck, moreso than nuclear. Your average wind farm pays itself off in less than 5 years.
This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.
Sweden already has a significant surplus of electricity production, to the degree that we are one of the largest exporters in the EU and have had several bouts of negative spot prices this past summer.
However, we also have an effect deficit for the colder part of the year. Two-thirds of simulations by SVK (our national power distributor) find that the peak-load hour during the winter 26/27 will have a deficit equivalent to three gen-II nuclear reactors running at 100% (10'000MW), and 10 continuous hours of blackouts due to power shortage. This is during the coldest part of the year when solar is ineffective, and additionally is often combined with high-pressure fronts, which means low wind speeds.
In Sweden upwards of 75% of homes get their heating from electricity, and potentially a full day without power in temperatures of beyond -30°C would literally mean people freezing to death.
Our power bill for December was 800€, and we both have geothermal heating and reduced our indoor temperature significantly, averaging 14-18°C indoors for the month. This was more than January, February and March combined. Meanwhile, the bills for all summer months put together (May, June, July and I expect also August) cost less than the bill for April (100€).
The most viable short-term solution they're looking at is (unfortunately) reopening old oil plants from the 60s & 70s however, this might not be possible either, due to newer EU legislations. Bringing them into compliance in time could cost 100's of millions of SEK, which ironically is more than the "prohibitively expensive repairs" that the previous gov:t cited when they shut down 4 nuclear reactors 2015-2020.
Link to article for the doubtful - It's in Swedish, so you'll have to use a translator.
Assuming you're telling the truth that there's a massive shortfall in December already (a provable lie ) then you are suggesting the solution for an urgent shortfall of around a TWh per year is to build 10GW of nuclear plants which will be ready in 2045 for €300 billion and run them at an operating loss for 10-11 months per year.
This in order to provide low grade heat which could be stored in a district heating system for a few dollars per kWh for a total cost of about 3% of your suggestion or even in batteries for about 20% of the cost (which would also run at a profit the rest of the year and make the hydro go further).
Nuke shills say some colossally stupid things, but this really takes the cake.
Since you couldn't be arsed to check for yourself before throwing out baseless accusations, here's a translation of a relevant part from the linked article. I doubt you'll read it, but it'll be here for anyone else that stumbles across this thread.
(Svenska Kraftnät a.k.a Swedish Power Grids is our national power distribution agency)
Btw, your source is 4 years out of date, and accounts for neither daily nor hourly power balance.
Here's an up to date source on monthly power balance.
Here's a report on peak loads in various northern european countries.
Here is an actual relevant source on the topic (again, in Swedish).
The above figure is taken from this report by SVK.
So the problem was nuclear being unreliable, and you can't comprehend the idea of picking the worst recent year before dropping demand due to covid (or clicking on the year dropdown or hitting the hourly output).
The capacity factor for nuclear power in Sweden (including losses from curtailment) was 83% of installed capacity during 2022, which exceeds the global average for that year (80%), by comparison wind had a capacity factor of 26% for the year. Hence, the issue is not reliability, but rather a lack of capacity. 1700MW (20%) of nuclear has been decommissioned since 2018 (which is why those stats are entirely irrelevant to the current situation). Hence that a the unexpected outage of a single reactor (1160 MW or 17% of total capacity) could have such a large impact.
Even with that outage, nuclear power remained the energy source with the greatest capacity % during the 22/23 winter (80%), despite being lower during peak demand. "Kärnkraft" is nuclear power.
So, in summary, you are either clueless regarding our situation in Sweden (I sincerely hope that is the case) or actively spreading misinformation (which would be the more unfortunate option).
Another bullshit attempt at paltering. Capacity factor isn't reliability. Failing unpredictably when needed and when asserting that it will work then is unreliability. Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.
Don't put words in my mouth, that is quite rude.
It is a useful comparison figure to examine reliability. Your inability to comprehend the connection clearly highlights your incompetence on the subject.
Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.
More attempted projection after having your lies pointed out. Pointing out your attempts at disinformation is the opposite. What you are doing is disgusting and intentional.
So, you're no longer arguing the topic but the person, do you have any rebuttal for the facts that they've presented? Any reason why you should be trusted above SVK?
I pointed out your lies and contradictions.
You responded with condescending insults and accusations of ignorance.
This is less true as time goes on. CCGT and coal has substantial overlap with all-in cost of firmed PV and onshore wind just in terms of capex and FOM. Nuclear O&M overlaps with all-in cost of wind or PV (although not the latter in sweden).
SMRs (most of the proposals to reduce cost) are also substantially less efficient than full sized reactors and the high grade Uranium or Uranium in countries you can pollute without consequence is mostly tapped out so prices are increasing (currently about $3/MWh for full scale or $6/MWh for an inefficient small reactor). By the time an SMR finally comes online, just the raw uranium will cost as much as renewables, let alone the rest of VOM (which is still a minority of O&M which is far, far less than Capex).
Anyone suggesting new nuclear should be regarded as either someone lying to maintain a nuclear weapons program, a scammer, or a russian agent trying to sell dependence on rosatom.
The first is potentially defensible, but they could also not lie instead.
Simply incorrect and ignorant and I could leave it at that.
But I won't so here:
Nuclear is carbon neutral
The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow
Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance
Current nuclear plants are nearing their end of life and needs to be replaced
I think Sweden does have some geographical complications, along with a lackluster transmission network. These are much harder to get private investment for. However if there was a decent transmission network then there would be more utility of renewable generation in the north as well as the capability for import of energy from neighbouring countries or even export when Sweden has an excess.
Putting my balls on the table, I reckon if Sweden put all the money they've got in nuclear into transmission first and then renewables, I reckon they could switch off more fossil fuels more quickly.
The points I listed are the strongest arguments to expand nuclear power which both the left and right of Riksdagen generally agrees on.
So how this is a right wing conspiracy to further the fossil energy industry as you point out is still to me a mystery, that's all you need to explain.
The fact that left and right wing parties both currently (in the middle of soaring energy prices and a cost of livings crisis) agree with measures that support fossil fuel interests does not change the fact that the Swedish government (which is currently right wing) is implementing policies that benefit the fossil fuel industry.
Also, I question the nuance in that - I'm sure many in the left that support nuclear investment, but are less happy about renewable targets being scrapped.
However I apologise if I came on a bit too hard with it being a left vs right wing issue. It's wealth vs society.
i heard that nuclear still kind of heats up the earth since its not outputting what has been put in by the sun before. Supposedly thats a problem since space is a good insulator.
It's a negligible amount of heat. Something like 0.000001% of the greenhouse effect from fossil fuels. Almost unmeasurable.
have you ever been in Sweden? it is a a rocky mountainous and mostly dark region. they only renewables that they can easily manage is geothermal and iirc they do not have the correct crust for it
According to another comment they have plenty of renewables up in the north but only use about 30% of that capacity. So it seems the main issue is with the transmission network for the country, its ability to get power from one place to another.
Instead of investing in 20 year nuclear power plant plans, they should be looking at accessing and expanding the available renewable generation in the short term.
the wind mills would be in inaccessible areas so you are better to just go with nuclear and invest in transmission from settlement to settlement instead to the turbines
Yeah 100% agree with you. I'm surprised that this is the case given the 2045 time scale but we'll have to wait a couple of decades and see how it pans out I guess.
Imo, renewable should still be the target, nuclear should be the bridge towards renewable until it's feasible enough
Which is exactly what they're doing if you read the article.
Building a stop-gap that will be ready 20 years after you get to the main destination for 10x the price isn't a bright move.
This would be a stronger argument, if it wasn't 20 years old already.
The best time to ignore the nuke shills and build wind and solar was the 1940s when both wind and solar thermal were proven economically and fission hadn't happened yet.
The second best time is now.
The best time to ignore the nuclear scare mongers us whenever they open their ignorant mouths.
You're confusing tired contempt with fear.
No, you definitely have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
I disagree... the biggest "issue" I have with "renewables" is the storage problem.. That 20 years gives you time to figure out something while reducing the carbon output
Battery storage is already cheaper than nuclear.
..no it won't because the new nuclear will generate nothing for 20 years. Whereas the renewables will reduce some carbon, even if we pretend that storage is both unsolvable (as opposed to already cheaper than nuclear) and necessary in a grid that's already 40% hydro.
I don't get why people here are so hyped. Why is it a good thing to completely dump renewables?
It’s just the target being dumped. We can’t go 100% renewable and have nuclear. So by expanding nuclear the target has got to go. Renewables will still be expanded in Sweden.
It means your gas shares will pay dividends for a few extra years.
People here have better reading comprehension apparently and know that dumping a 100% target doesn't mean dumping renewables.
Going 'all in' on something usually means neglecting everything else.
Hell yeah, tell me the best future isn't nuclear power and electric rail like an old space Lego set.
Nuclear's probably not a great long term choice since it's a lot more expensive than renewables.
But that's just the generated per kwh cost, not taking into account when the energy is generated. To compare a full renewables grid to a renewables nuclear mixed grid you need to take into account massive energy storage systems and their inefficiencies and possible material shortages. We can't just compare the currently favorable cost per kwh without taking into account problems as we scale into less reliable energy sources.
You will need long term storage in both cases. Nuclear can't act as a peaker because you can't quickly ramp up or down the generation. Nuclear can only perform as baseload which, in theory, could be provided by a renewable energy mix if the install base is high enough.
I don't disagree with your point that it isn't a simple direct comparison but any sensible energy mix will still require storage. I find it difficult to see the economic case for nuclear if renewables can be installed in sufficient quantities, given that nuclear is roughly 4 times as expensive as solar and wind.
That's only true for NPPs built decades ago. Modern designs can also do load-following power. For peaks you have renewables, of course, they complement each other. Diversity makes a healthy grid.
The plants that can allegedly do this almost never do, and most of them have had maintenance issues which cost more to fix than replacing them with renewables.
I think this is a maybe in terms of what the grid needs. Will be great if nuclear is built that genuinely supports system demands.
Couldn't agree more.
It's good that they can do it. Even better if they don't need to.
Niclear has high investment cost and very low production cost which incentivises runnig at max output for as long as possible. This might block out renewables from the grid if their production cost is higher and make it less profitable to build them. So its really not a Symbiosis between nuclear and regenerative
With 100% renewables you would need almost 100% storage and potentially for multiple days, with a nuclear baseload you'd only need storage for the peaks, you could even use excess renewables to charge up the storage for these peaks.
What do you mean with 100% Storage? And why would you need it for multiple days if you have a grid that transports energy all around the continent and in future possible worldwide?
I guess we can talk about transmission then, yes if you can get enough renewable energy across a continent then in theory you can transmit it to where it is needed, however you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available. The current interconnects can handle an impressive amount of load but you're not going to transmit enough power for all of sweeden from spain. There are some massive transmission projects underway that should help address this but they're still not going to be enough to cover a 100% outage for most places. So a cost analysis would have to be done to determine if massive transmission projects are better than building nuclear plants. Keep in mind, these same transmission lines can transmit nuclear power as well so they should be built regardless of what energy source you use.
can be build faster and cheaper than nuclear, doesn't need fuel and needs to be build anyway. We get the cheapest, strongest and least dangerous grid if we invest in more renewables, storage and better transmission. And that's something we can get done fast and start harvesting the profits in a few years.
I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I'm not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don't exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we're working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That's not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I'm also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I'll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won't magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we're going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.
High voltage dc transmission lines already exist and are already in use .
This is build faster and with fewer risks than nuclear.
Not sure about the 100% point but you will certainly need long term storage which is an unsolved problem. A point I wanted to make was that with enough renewables installed you have the baseload. You would also have an excess of production at peak times that would be useful to store long term.
My personnal view is that a sensible energy mix should have some nuclear but I don't think it is the key to solving our future energy requirements and should be minimal as it isn't good value.
Entirely unsubstantiated. Renewables require storage only for the peak demands, otherwise, they function as a baseload, provided that there is a sensitive balance of wind and solar power generation installations.
If you want 99.9999% uptime with no backup then the nuclear fleet will need months or years of storage due to the prevalence of correlated unplamned outages.
Back in reality, a good enough renewable system with >95-99% uptime has less than 10% of the storage that will be found in the accompanying country's EV fleet. Even if you are too allergic to nuance to understand the real solution for the remainder, simply planning a renewable rollout and assuming existing fossil fuel peakers for down periods over 12 hours will take 20-100 years to release as much carbon as delaying one of the years waiting for late, over budget nuclear reactors.
And thus you have shown that your mind is made up and no amount of evidence will sway your decisions. Good day.
I'm plenty open to evidence, it's just every time I look at some it shows a new lie that nukebros tell. Every single talking point isnutter bullshit to the pooint where if you look it up you find that nukes are significantly worse by whatever hair-splitting metric is being used ti try and distract from their main downsides.
There is a fully renewable solution for the 2-5 >100 hour events a year where battery storage is unsuitable, but it requires holding more than one thought in your head at a time (thermal storage, dispatchable load and w2e is one combo).
That's not very open minded. I'm all for vetting your sources and skepticism, but going in with your mind made up is close minded.
Look my dude, you're clearly here to fight not discuss, and that's fine we absolutely need to fight against the establishment, activisim is important. Fighting against your allies is a pro gamer move though.
That last bit is the rub though. I'm fighting to decarbonize and reduce exploitation kf resource rich countries and you're fighting to stop it.
The constant tirade of insane lies is tolerable. Pretending you're not on the side of fossil fuels is the incredibly insulting bit.
No, the insulting bit is youd constant tirade of insane lies, buttercup.
France, with all it's maintainance disasters with their nuclear reactors shows us yet another problem: how to properly cool the water for the generator? With sinking fresh-water levels in rivers and fastly rising water temperatures nuclear reactors become less reliable. Wind and solar output on the other side will in an ironical way get a little more reliable, as there will be more of both.
One of the biggest problems that we have today when it comes to energy production (and a whole lot of other things) is putting all our eggs in one basket. Well how the fuck does this change anything?
I am not anti-nuclear, but dumping ALL renewable targets is moronic. Now you've simply replaced one egg for another egg, but it's still just ONE egg. A stable energy portfolio is diversifying your sources.
The article doesn't say if they intend to have 100% nuclear or if they dropped the target of 100% renewable to have a mix with more nuclear
Great observation 👍 could well be a misleading title
Dosent sweden already have a fairly high and fairly stable energy production through their hydroelectiric power plants . Wouldnt it be better to just build more of those.
I’m not sure the situation in Sweden, but usually the easily developed hydro sites have already been built, and any remaining sites will be quite expensive compared to power generated. Additionally, climate change can threaten the reliability of hydro as snowmelt and precipitation become more unpredictable. Also, they generally have a fairly large negative environmental impact aside from climate change.
I’m sure there are some projects that will pencil out but probably not enough to decarbonize the whole energy grid.
Yeah afaik there are a couple of suitable places for more hydropower but no plans for more due to, like you said, local environmental reasons.
That said, sweden is basically already completely "decarbonized" (if anything can really be decarbonized), we only have a reserve oil powerplant that runs for maybe a couple of days each year (~9 days last year, though last year was especially bad). Sweden also generally has a pretty big net surplus (usually about 10-20% of production) of green power that is sold to the european grid.
We do, but enviromental regulations pushed through during the past two decades is essentially preventing any new or expanded hydro projects. In fact, a lot of smaller hydro plants are instead being demolished due to being incompatible with these laws.
What? They are demolishing hydro plants? Do you have a source for that?
Below is a news article from Swedish Television (SVT) translated to english using LLM. Couldn't find it in english. Original article
10 reactors? How long is that gonna take to build? A single reactor can take at least 8 years. So hopefully they aren’t ditching renewables all together. You can build a lot of solar and wind farms in those 8 years.
This is exactly the issue. Nuclear is necessary in the long term for a clean grid, however it will take much longer than as well as take investment away from renewable projects - which could achieve net zero more quickly than nuclear.
We should be going hard on current renewable technology, build out a massive excess (to account for reduced generation, the wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun shines throguh the clouds), and then once we have met all our energy needs from clean energy and phased out fossil fuels we can focus on fortifying the grid - in particular at that point we will need large turbines with lots of rotating mass, for voltage and frequency stability, which is a perfect role for nuclear to fulfill.
One of the problems that we have is that a big chunk of the country for a month don't have a single ray of sunshine due to polar nights. The problem is that that is when it's complete darkness leading up to the point and going out of it takes time as well so solar is not an option at that time of the year. On top of that most of the land is "disputed" by indigenous people (don't mark my words it's a very touchy subject I don't know how to express it better) or it's a nature reserve area so wind farms are out of the question. So the only thing we have left is hydropowered electricity which isn't clean at all as it destroys the natural course of the river up stream, destroys the river beds down stream and extremely reduces the fish populations as well as any greenery relying on the reliability of the rivers.
With that said if we simplify it a bit about 46% of Swedens total energy production comes from the northern hydroelectric plants and wind farms and because of lacking infrastructure it can't be transferred efficiently to southern Sweden where most of the consumption is happening. Of these 46% about only 30% is currently used but more companies have decided to establish their production in thr northern region due to the surplus of energy in this region.
Southern Sweden on the other hand gets a lot of their energy from unreliable wind farms as well as nuclear energy. However due to the layout of the land hydroelectric is only viable in some places which have already been exploited. We can only install so many wind farms until it affects quality of life to the people and animals living nearby. On a good day southern Sweden is having a net zero energy production and consumption. Those days are fewer and further in between. Currently since closing a reactor two years ago we have had to reinstate an oil burning facility as well as buying unclean electricity from abroad to keep up with demand.
So investing in nuclear to stabilise the production is one of very few options we currently have.
It's either that or moving either part of the population or factories to the northern part which is not really viable or sustainable eitherm
It sounds like the biggest issue is transmission, you need high capacity transmission lines between the north and south. That way, you could not only use more than the 30% currently, but expand that capacity. Also, transmission between neighbouring countries could help.
Currently we sell the surplus in the north to Finland and Norway as well as to Denmark and Germany in the south when we are over capacity.
What we would need is a better connection between north and south but that hasn't been a priority until now and it's 30 years too late.
The best time to plant a tree..
Nuclear takes a hell of a lot of subsidised state money, and that pot of money only ever grows. Renewables don't need state money, they're profitable on their own. Renewables will grow readily if the transmission infrastructure is there, and moreso if the planning process capacity is expanded (hire more civil servants), let alone if rates were subsidised anywhere near the same level as nuclear.
The best case scenario would be the government itself building state-owned renewable infrastructure, where the profit from selling cheap electricity on the commercial market would come directly back to the community. Most wind farms are owned by one company and managed & operated by another, with the turbine manufacturer providing turbine services. There's no reason the government couldn't be the owning company.
Funnily enough, projects for green steel and the construction of new massive factories in Northern Sweden mean that the power surplus is expected to be gone by 2030. We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.
Exactly. We need it quickly.
Renewables are here now and can be deployed quickly. Nuclear takes time and is often heavily delayed and over budget.
We need nuclear as well, but we need renewables first, to build capacity as quickly as possible. We need a huge excess of renewable capacity, to account for times when the full capacity isn't available. We shouldn't expect to be using the full capacity at any time.
Once we've phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.
Care to elaborate on this?
The two largest economies with the low reliance on fossil fuels for energy (Sweden & France) get significant portions of their energy production from nuclear power. Iceland relies on geothermal, and the others (Tajikistan, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Norway) have lots of hydro capacity, which are all excellent, but also largely dependent on geography.
I don't have figures to hand, but I'd gladly dig into them with you, if you have suggestions.
Sweden does have some amount of fossil fuel generation. The article claims 3 nuclear plants provide 30% of the country's needs right now, and says the target being set is for 10 new nuclear plants over the next 20 years. In 2045 (~20 years), demand is predicted to be double that of today.
If we assume all current nuclear plants will close and all new plants will be 20% larger, that means these 10 new nuclear plants will fulfill 60% of predicted demand in ~2045. Again, I'm happy to review actual numbers - I imagine most if not all of these 10 plants are at least in early design proposal stages, so there are some actual MW numbers to be crunched.
I think keeping Sweden's nuclear at about 30-40%, while investing more into a large excess of renewables, would allow fossil fuels to be switched off more quickly. This would still mean investment and growth in nuclear, with maybe 5 or 6 plants (if the 3 existing plants have to close), but would get rid of fossil fuels more quickly.
In maybe 10 years' time, with fossil fuels well and truly on their way out, that would be a better time to expand nuclear.
Our world in data has excellent stats on the topic, and I am quite familiar with the electricity production of Sweden (my home country). Excepting 2003 and 2010 (both quite cold winters) the share of electricity from fossil fuel sources has been sub 5% since 1997. Thus, for my own country I tend to look more at the share of all energy that comes from fossil fuels (currently 26%) rather than just electricity, but below is a chart detailing the shares of electricity produced by each category.
As you can see, investments in wind have been massive, adding 30 TWh of production (~15%) since 2010. However, in the meantime, nuclear energy has not only been neglected, but actively dismantled. Since 2010, some 15 TWh of production has been removed from the grid. Whilst this isn't an issue in isolation, import demands for electricity from continental Europe have increased noticeably during the same time period. In 2010, we had net 0 power flow, whilst 2021 saw a net export of ~16TWh (mainly to a country that completely dismantled their fleet of nuclear reactors instead of their coal power plants and shall not be named)
What this means is that in a decade, with a population increase of 10% and a GDP increase of 20%, electricity availability has actually declined, which is becoming a serious problem now that some of the most energy intensive areas of society are starting to electrify in earnest (transports and heavy industries).
Green steel is the perfect dispatchable load. The steps up until sponge iron require very little capex, with the input costs being driven by energy price it is a far better match for renewables.
Same goes for high temperature electrolysis.
The resulting iron stores 2-8kWh/kg with nothing more than a box as infrastructure (and maybe some oil or nitrogen to stop rust).
Both are so ideal as dispatchable loads that iron js seriously being considered as a fuel/energy carrier instead of hydrogen.
Then run the arc furnaces which are higher capex and labour cost but a fifth of the energy at a constant rate.
The idea of buildkng nuclear to run green steel is utterly deranged.
They are though. Focus on fossil fuels now and promise nuclear later - thats the plan.
Hopefully not as long as offshore wind farms. If Swedish laws regarding os wind are similar to Danish, it'll easily take 9-10 years from decision to actually begin building.
Swede here.
Just clarifying some things.
Sweden is not dropping renewable energy. We are (at least for now) going to include nuclear energy among the other alternatives such as water, wind and solar.
But here's one of the problems we are trying to solve with nuclear power:
Sweden is a major producer of high quality steel and we have set a target to become CO2 free in 2045 when it comes to steel production.
Currently the steel production in Sweden is responsible for 5500000 metric tons of CO2 per year and we have plans to go 0 CO2 by 2045.
To be able to do this we need, just for the CO2 free steel production, 70 TWh per year.
In 2020 there were 4333 wind turbines 26TW of electricity in Sweden. While you might think that we'd just build 9000 more it will not likely not solve the main problem with wind and solar power production: reliability.
So either we continue using fossil fuel to produce steel or we don't. It's as easy as that.
A low carbon energy source is useless if it cannot cover peak loads, which are now being covered by fossil fuels. Years of greenie obstructionism now means that the nuclear plants that would have been built are now missing, and the solutions offered by the anti-nuclear lobby seems to be "let them have energy poverty, brownouts and outright blackouts are not our problem". This will happen once coal and oil plants shut down, renewables alone cannot cover the demands, especially at peak load.
Peaker technology is best replaced by batteries. Powerwalls and V2G has already been shown to dramatically reduce brownouts and need for Peakers. You need to educate yourself a bit. It’s not 1995 anymore.
Such an absolutely brainless response. Of course renewables alone can cover the demands, and they're our only option since nuclear energy is inherently dangerous, extremely expensive and damaging to the environment and climate due to the immense amounts of concrete required. Furthermore, grid-level storage is a made up problem with regard to renewables, we could easily cover peak demands by expanding hydroelectric pump storage systems and reservoirs, and potential new battery solutions would make this even less of an expense.
Climate harm is a matter of degrees, I think.
Why isn't a few tons of concrete worth eliminating so many emissions?
If you're going to claim a response is brainless you should at least try not Maki a brainless response yourself. Nuclear isn't inherently dangerous, and is better for the environment in the long term.
i like these comments. just have to read the first sentence to know when the blud has knocked himself out of the conversation.
Downvote me all you want but nuclear is not a long term solution. Short term at best.
It's relatively clean compared to fossil fuels but it has several critical flaws on the long term.
For starters, it produces extremely toxic waste which we have no idea how to get rid of besides burying it and forget about it. Everytime someone mentions this all we hear is "we can create x method to dispose of it cleanly". Right, but while we develop X method that shit keeps piling up. And when X method fails to work as we intended "oh, well, just keep bury it and lets start thinking about Y".
And the biggest problem is this. Nuclear is actually relatively safe since the security regulations are (or should) be very strict. But all it takes is one bad enough disaster. Disasters like Chernobyl had the potential to leave half of Europe inhabitable for centuries. But, hey, as long as the regulations are strict and we have equipment and procedures that manage the human error we would be fine, right? Not really. Murphy's law. The worst scenario will happen eventually. A obscure bug in the security systems, an unexpected natural disaster, war or terrorism. There's always a failure point. In other energy types, we can manage that risk. One very rare disaster is not enough to make it not worth it if the good outweights the bad. Not in nuclear energy. Only one disaster can be potentially catastrophic and outweight all the good it made for decades or even centuries.
On the long term it is just not worth it. On the short term...it's a gamble.
You are clueless about how nuclear wastes or radiation work. Any oil tanker sinking is a worst disaster than the worst nuclear accident ever was. A nuclear power plant is not a bomb. Radiations are not a magic disaster that erase life.
Meanwhile co2 is an actual life extinction threat, and Germany opened coal power plant to compensate for nuclear energy. What a great move ecologists! Bravo !
What does a sinking oil tanker have to do with anything? That’s just whataboutism. Nuclear waste, nuclear disasters and sinking oil tankers are all bad.
“Radiations” can absolutely “erase life”. You don’t think radiation can kill living things? That statement makes it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Besides, It takes 10-15 years to make a new nuclear power plant. If you really care about sinking oil tankers and climate change you’d realize that we don’t have that much time.
Germany did nothing but burn coal and gas in 20 years since they've decided to leave nuclear energy. Is that your plan?
Radiations don't erase life. Beaches would be full of dead bodies otherwise and you wouldn't eat bananas. You have no clue about radioactivity obviously so you might as well trust people who do.
"Radiations"
Ahahahah!
Regardless of how wise it is to use nuclear energy, we can all deduce, from your replies, that you know jack shit about what "radiations" actually is.
Is that something about how English language is so specific? It always come back to that when facts can't be disproven.
Then please illuminate how high energy radiation is not dangerous. I do not believe that you can do that, as you appear to never have attended a physics or biology class in your life
Germany did nothing in the last 20 years? Are you high. Did you even think about looking up how the energy production changed during that time?
You are delusional.
I never said it was. A nuclear disaster is much worse than a bomb on the long term. A bomb causes immediate destruction and fallout which clears in a few years at most. A bomb like Hiroshima, which is by atomic bomb standards a very "dirty" bomb, gave a radiation dosage of about 360 mSv to survivors 1 mile from the epicenter. The radiation went down to 1/1000 in 24 hours and 1/1000 of that within a week.
Chernobyl firemen received 37 times the same dosage and the core kept emitting radiation to this day (though slowly diminishing) hence the sarcophagus.
Hiroshima was never even abandoned after the bombing. It is a thriving city today. Chernobyl and the surrounding regions had tp be evacuated and its access is restricted to this day. In the Russian invasion you had soldiers dying because they digged in contaminated soil. The melted core is, to this day, emitting deadly radiation and only the sarcophagus stops that poison from spreading. And it could've been much worse. And it will stay this way for centuries or even millenia. A breach in the sarcophagus is enough reason for panic. This was ONE disaster.
The current climate crisis is the result of over a century of CO2 emissions and multiple disasters. Chernobyl was just one and had the potential to turn half a continent uninhabitable. How many would we need to turn the planet into a wasteland in the immediate future?
I'm all to take measures to keep global warming in check but lets not burn the house down because the plumbing is not working.
You have 0 clue about radioactivity, how dangerous it is, how it works or even what it is. You are comically ignorant! You'll certainly tell me that chernobyl killed more people than Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs now?
Everyone needs its scarecrow I guess. Beware of bananas btw, those things are radioactive too.
You failed to address any of my arguments. You only attacked me and put words in my mouth. I see no point to keep answering you.
Boi you're the proverbial pigeon shitting on a chessboard.
Bananas are not radioactive, as they do not contain a significant amount of radioisotopes that emit high energy ionising electromagnetic radiation or alpha/beta decay products.
Ignorance again! Or is it hypocrisy? What is significant? What is radioactive?
It is probably the only thing that can really buy us time. Sure we cannot dispose of its waste currently, but it buys us time to find a way. We will find a way to solve the waste issue. Besides, the waste produced is actually quite little, and we do have great solutions for storage. As for your second point, Chernobyl could have been an even worse disaster indeed, but it is a plant built in a time when it was fashionable to built bigger and larger plants. Today, the strategy is to built the plants smaller, making the impact of such disaster also smaller.
That's the only way it would make sense as a solution. It's a gamble, but it's a risk worth taking in the short term. But that only works with already built reactors.
"we will", but we haven't. We're creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.
Still potentially catastrophic in a perfect storm. Remember Chernobyl had multiple reactors (who kept functioning) after the disaster. That was only one. I don't think downsizing would solve the risk but I hope I'm mistaken. Remember how we went into panic when the Russians entered Chernobyl or whenever we see news about Zaporozhia?
We haven't seen yet the worst possible nuclear energy disaster. I fear we might not see many...
Just to refute a simple statement for you, please stop spreading disinformation.
Nuclear waste is solved. Probably one of the most solved kinds of waste on the planet, unlike the waste your smartphone or pc will become in a few years.
Video Essay for your education, better than anything I could write up in five minutes.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
For those advocating an all renewable energy grid. You cannot reliably power big industrial factories and infrastructure with renewables only. The answer NEEDS to be: nuclear as a base, and a heavy push towards decentralized renewable grid on top.
You can if you spend times on batteries/energy storage. The question is where the trade off is optimal.
Didn't expect the current government to get something right. The funny thing about the right is that they at least support nuclear. Probably for the wrong reasons.
People are too optimistic about renewables. The world has a limited supply and if the richer countries keep competing over it when will the poorer nations ever get the chance to ditch their coal and oil?
How many countries have invested into production vs just out buying the poorer countries?
The intermediate solution to our problems will be a mix of nuclear and renewables. Being so against nuclear despite our massive issues with climate is a nice gamble people take on other people's future.
We are both far from meeting current electricity demand even in the richest nations and switching away from oil in transport. We need multiple solutions. And as we have seen from the current energy crisis in Europe, no government or population is willing to have a discontinuous energy supply, something common in most renewables.
The world has a "limited supply" of renewables? I am sorry, but are you out of your mind? With renewables, we literally only passively use what the environment already provides. The sun radiates its light toward us for free endlessly and does not care for what we do, and the kinetic energy of the Earth's winds that we use for power generation would otherwise destroy many livelihoods as deadly hurricanes or similar. We have a virtually unlimited supply of these sources, and renewables ARE the key to a greater autonomy of lesser developed countries, just BECAUSE they do not require the import or expensive extraction of fuel resources such as coal, oil or uranium. In fact, nuclear power plants are even more prone to a loss of geopolitical autonomy because of the need for uranium, which is costly to enrich and which you cannot get from everywhere. So, in summary, the situation is the exact opposite of what you've written.
Hard to take you seriously when you start your post misinterpreting my post to such an extent. The sun doesn't produce electricity. The electricity we get from the sun is very much a limited supply. I'll just assume the rest of your post is pointless to read.
Here's me thinking I'd left the nuclear shills behind on Reddit. Nuclear is expensive, takes forever to build, and produces unacceptable waste. Renewables are much cheaper and MUCH quicker to implement.
LFTR when 😭
When the words "experimental nuclear reactor being built near you" doesn't attract massive groups of protesters fueled by the coal companies, allowing for the tech to actually be built and tested
At least I hope they have the good sense to build the plants somewhere relatively remote, just in case of a leak.
It's sweden, if you pick locations randomly, chances are on your side that it'll be insanely remote.
Good to know! That means plenty of places that could be cordoned off in case of a Fukushima, right?
Tell me you know nothing about nuclear science without telling me
(Simpsons doesn't count as a credible source)
I'm surprised to see so many people eagerly dismissing the chance of a nuclear reactor leak, even by accident.
And what are those chances may I ask?
Its like comparing a 1970's shitbox car to a 2022 model and saying all cars are immediately gonna kill us.
Really don't think any nuclear reactor leaks are not accidents, hence why we have such amazing tech to stop it
Chances of a leak are roughly 100%
Most sites are unusable for a few decades due to tritium leaks.
Chances of an economy-destroying disaster on the other hand are much lower, but you didn't ask that.
Odds of a leak are what?? Give me some of whatever youre smoking, unless you mean some backass "technically they leak runoff water" bs, cause reactors are currently the safest way to generate power, even beating the insanely small dangers of solar (which due to production requires more overall human risk)
Also now you're lying again with that second sentence. For no benefit whatsoever, as well. This is also a 100% consistent pattern with nuke shills.
Fucking idiots.
Good
Nuclear and Renewables are incompatible. One has to go in a grid.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm
Interesting read. To anyone interested, the original article can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00696-3 Also note there is a critical re-analysis posted in 2022 reporting some other results, and a reply from the original author again.
Former Nuclear Leaders: Say ‘No’ to New Reactors
https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-to-new-reactors/
Finally! Some countries are starting to make rational decisions!
fucking based
tf wrote that title.. nuclear is defacto renewable
No, it's zero emission but not renewable.
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source. Even coal and oil are renewable on long enough time scales. But there will never be more uranium than there is right now.
We actually don't have that much of it if we consider the long term future, only a thousand years or so. So nuclear is intended to be a bridge to eventual full renewable power generation and storage, an essential component in the present day but it's still a bridge.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear is the only power source that works in deep space away from the Sun. So if we're serious about exploring the solar system or further, we'd be best not to burn up all of our fissionable material right away.
Coal exist in the earth because back then the bacteria who could break down lignin and cellulose hadn’t evolved, so dead trees had the time they needed to compress. There are such bacteria around now, though, and that means there will never be any new natural coal.
The process to produce coal is known for 100 years now. Its just not feasible, because no one needs coal. But its reversible. No one knows how to fuse uranium.
We actually know how. It's the cycle of thorium. You make U233 from Th232.
I wouldn't necessarily say never, it could potentially happen that a dead tree ends up in an environment that isn't conducive to lignin-eating bacteria getting to it, and I would not be at all surprised if it has happened and may continue to happen somewhere in the world since those bacteria evolved, though they would certainly be exceptional cases and almost definitely not happening at any significant scale.
It's also possible for those bacteria to go extinct one way or another. Again, not very likely. And if it did happen it would probably be due to some absolutely catastrophic disaster absolutely wrecking the Earth's ecosystem completely in which case we're probably not going to make it either, but hey, new coal!
Its not even zero emission...
What are the emissions, aside from waste heat?
The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.
Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.
if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.
Not true, the newest solar panels don't need rare earths at that scale.
Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous... The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.
Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)
these things are easy to look up, eg this is from the ipcc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_Emissions_from_Electricity_Production_IPCC.png nuclear is on a par or better than most renewable sources.
This data is old as hell... Especially regarding technology that changes twice a year...
Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.
Because renewables don't change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn't involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s
Solar requires 0 rare earths, troll.
Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.
Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.
Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.
The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.
You're sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.
iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths
In the last 10-15 years they've moved to more abundant materials
When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
I'm a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.
You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive...
Depends, newer version of the stuff don't need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.
I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be "effective" 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.
Okay.
Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.
Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.
Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.
The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.
Your materials can be recycled after.
The ground around the mine isn't poisoned with heavy metals permanently,
This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.
The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).
Transport, and the building are negligible enough they're not worth considering.
In either case, it's largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.
have you seen how large wind turbines are ?
I have like 20 in visible range from my window, yes, whats your point?
how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.
Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.
wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?
Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the "representative" lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.
Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn't stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.
Thanks
Read the other comments explaining it.
Most of those costs are similar for renewables...rather than a building it's the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.
In both cases I'm pretty sure it's a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.
The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.
Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.
And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don't even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.
Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.
Seaside reactors have other problems like rising Sea levels... Just putting some wind turbines up would not lead to another Chernobyl when something bad happens...
Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.
Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂
And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can't run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.
Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country's power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.
Sweden?
Drought?
Anyway I'm not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won't pretend to know what the best path is. I'm just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.
But even if they're not, it's good they're moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.
Well no, that's the thing. They've replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they're going to in 2045
Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.
Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?
But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable
The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.
And there's a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?
A bit of a stretch maybe, but I'm considering us to be discussing whether an energy source is renewable on Earth. The Sun is not renewable, but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well! So as long as the Earth exists, I would say that solar PV and other solar driven processes like wind and hydro are renewable.
By these standards yes, deep geothermal and tidal are "not renewable" either.
But that's exactly the "problem", there's enough fertile material for potential millions of years of consumption, and that's for fission alone.
I think the debacle is more because the definition of "renewable" is a little arbitrary than the dilemma if nuclear is renewable or not
I think we both agree on fertile material as discussed in another comment, the longevity issue is mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly.
I'm just being pedantic about the sun, lol
Well, yes, the obvious counter argument being that, you will never build more advanced reactors on scale (some are already available), or develop new fuel cycle if you stunt the evolution process and block the technology we already have.
Imagine saying to be favourable to installing solar panels but only when they will be 100% recyclable and with efficiency close to the theorical maximum
This would be relevant if any reactor had ever gotten its energy from primarily from fertile material. None have so it is not.
We would if ecologist weren't shutting down any research on this subject.
"It wouldn't have bankrupted every program that tried if you'd just let us fill every body of water with lethal levels of Pu240, Cs137 and Tc99" isn't a great counter argument.
That's look like not renewable, but like "smaller resources cost".
Fission and fusion are two different things.
A thousand years is a massive over-estimate. Providing the 6TW or so of final energy with the stuff assumed to exist that's vaguely accessible for costs that don't exceed renewables' total cost is well under a decade.
No breeding program has ever done a full closed cycle and even if it were to happen, the currently proposed technologies only yield about 50 years.
"Renewable" typically means renewable on human time scales, so fossil fuels don't count.
Biofuel would be renewable.
If you consider fusion to be "nuclear", that's renewable. But yeah, not fission.
It is zero emission though.
Will have more when the sun explodes.
I'm sorry what? How do you renew fissile material?!?
It's a little bit complicated and I don't want to write a wall of text but: Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.
The argument being, if you consider the word "renewable" in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc. The common usage of renewable is along the line of "immensely big proportional to human consumption" and in this sense there's a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.
Calling an LWR renewable because somebody somewhere might run a closed fuel cycle eventually is like calling oil renewable because you can make hydrocarbons by electrolyzing CO2 and water.
It's and absurd and ridiculous lie.
With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)
Except it has happened at least once at >99% yield.
And happens regularly commercially at >70% yield.
So you continue to repeat stupid and absurd lies.
Could you back your claims up?
Because in Europe and US the recycling rate if solar panels is around 10% and that without considering we might being miscalculating their real impact
Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we're basically done and there's absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s
You're now trying to misdirect with an unrelated statistic. The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
Breeding some fissile fuel is not closing the fuel cycle. No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on. Closed cycle nuclear is not even proof of concept.
The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn't the amount reprocessable either. But to adhere to your argument, it's the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn't an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it's called being out of market, not market saturation.
In reality we aren't recycling solar panels.
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there's no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
You've now switched from closed cycle to using the dregs via reprocessing. Entirely unrelated concepts (and reprocessing is also ecologically awful and uneconomical in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining).
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled.
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX. MOX-2 has never happened.
You cannot even keep your bizarre straw man tangent straight.
A closed cycle require reprocessing, how else would you recover fissile content in exhaust fuel? Magic?
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We'll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
No, because there is a specific piece of legislation mandating it, a clear well costed industrial plan, and idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out.
What you've done is the "nothing can ever start happening more than it is now" fallacy which nuke shills love to roll out.
Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238 is a very good way of demonstrating that you actually understand reprocessing /s
Unfortunately most reactors are not breeders and we are trying our best to lock the waste away forever which ruins any chance of recovery when we finally do migrate to breeder cycles. I like to compare our current reactors to burning just the bark off of logs and then tossing the rest in a smoldering heap, with 95-99% of the energy still retained in the waste.
Breeder reactors would indeed extend the long term viability of nuclear fission immensely, we should be using them exclusively.
you do not need a breeder to recycle most of it. also that 95% is still there for future us to use when we are able to.
No it's not. That's just delusional. All the ideas of a sustainable uranium fuel cycle are based on non-existent technology. Uranium is a finite resource and we have nowhere near enough of it to power the world, even if you ignore all the other problems.
there is enough U238 to last until we get there. except if you think fusion is more than 500 years away (yes, that number is out of my ass)
U238 is not fissile so that's not very useful.
......
Wtf no.