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.
I don’t get why people here are so hyped. Why is it a good thing to completely dump renewables?
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It means your gas shares will pay dividends for a few extra years.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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?
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.
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Wrong
Great news. A zero emissions electricity grid requires nuclear, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future; new battery techs are not there yet, and other non-intermittent sources like geothermal are too small scale and/or geographically specific. An irrational aversion to nuclear power has been a big obstacle to decarbonization, so every step in this direction is to be celebrated!
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.
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?
Fission and fusion are two different things.
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.
Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.
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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.
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
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:
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Nuclear is carbon neutral
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The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow
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Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance
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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.
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Nuclear and Renewables are incompatible. One has to go in a grid.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm
Most corrupt government ever in Sweden. That’s the reason
Sucks that you’re getting downvoted, it’s basically true, this is just to make it seem like they’re gonna fix everything later while shelving any short and long term plans for hydro, wind and solar energy
Mainly it is a show for the rightwing voters. Funding will not happen. Sweden politics today is like lowfi US bribery system. It’s just that the Swedes don’t like to acknowledge the fact it’s so corrupt. 99% have their pockets filled one way or another.
Good
Finally! Some countries are starting to make rational decisions!
