this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Reducing dependence on their aging expensive nuclear power infrastructure has been a campaign promise of every French president for the last decade. Switzerland just voted via referendum to shutter their nuclear fleet, Germany has phased out nukes almost entirely.
The reality of it is: They're expensive. They generate waste which could theoretically be reused or even locked away in underground vaults, but it's frequently just stored on site in reality. And whether the danger is real or perceived, no one wants to live next to a nuke, because if things go wrong, they go very wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see nukes make a comeback, I think they're a valuable part of the energy mix. I actually know a guy in crypto who is trying to set up financially strained nuclear plants with on-site crypto miners to help them gain back some of that lost revenue from paying people to take power during light load periods. Which I think is a fantastic use case and a great way to make Bitcoin less environmentally destructive. There are other dispatchable loads that could fill the same niche (water desalinization, green hydrogen production).
But the unfortunate reality is that nuclear plants are dying right now, and unless something big changes they're going to be driven out of existence by wind and solar.
they aren't being driven out of existence by wind and solar that's just wrong.
They are being driven out by prolitics and fear of the unknown.
Waste is problem which has been blown out of proportion in the media.
Nuclear is more expensive than wind comparable to solar. Major point in it's favor is base load reliability. Look at capacity factors of the major base load providers. Solar is barely 26%/ Wind 24%/30% on-/off shore and Nuclear is 3x of that and highly predictable (as it's downtime is planned maintainsnce).
Pure wind solar would have to be 300% average load(heating excluded!!!) with nearly 15day storage to have a blackout probability on under 1%.
I am genuinely all for Wind and Solar. Although my comments on this post might lead one to think otherwise.(independence of power for countries is a big + for Wind Solar which is a - for Nuclear)
But I am for fastest road to green electricity... more like just do everything to get rid of CO2 intense production methods.