this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Meanwhile Germany has more than twice the renewables than the US (and still more than their renewables and nuclear combined), and is set to quit coal entirely by 2038. Still too slow, but how about instead of shilling the dangerous¹ technology that is nuclear, you start pointing fingers at those doing next to nothing to change for the better?
¹ not necessarily during regular operations to regular people. But since Germany doesn't have uranium it would introduce foreign dependencies, nuclear power plants are high value targets both for terrorism and state warfare, as seen in Ukraine. There is no safe way to store nuclear waste long-term. Mining of uranium is furthermore massively harmful to workers and the environment.
Everything we do is harmful. Using more coal is even worse. The very dirty coal that Germany is using worse worse. Depending on the method of mining coal, it is massively harmful to the workers. I don't think the method Germany is using is as bad as say the method the Appalachian miners used.
That's why Germany wants to phase out coal next after nuclear energy production has been phased out in 2023. In 2038 coal is planned to be completed passed out and be replaced by climate neutral energy consisting of renewables and green hydrogen gas power plants until 2045.
BTW mining uranium is in no way better than mining coal: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environmental-impacts-mining-and-enriching-uranium
The UK hit zero coal in 2020 without even trying. 2038 is actually a piss take. If you used nuclear like France and China you would be able to do it much sooner lol.
Oh, it's bullshit, don't get me wrong. But nuclear is not changing that, the UK has less than 10% as well.
Besides, nuclear power station take a minimum of 20 years to construct, so even if we reversed course, we wouldn't have them running until the 40s. Contrast that with less than 5 for most renewables. Nuclear is also really expensive, so we could instead invest the money into a better and more flexible grid.
Nuclear is not the answer to climate change. Let existing plants run until coal is gone, then shut them off in favor of renewables.
What are you lying for? It's around 16% as of 2020. They are building more as well
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
I was using the live data from today, no need to accuse me of lying. It has risen from 9.7% to 12.2% in the meantime, however: https://grid.iamkate.com/
You could have scrolled down and hit the year tab to get a more representative number, which is around 14%. Taking the daily value doesn't make much sense now does it?
If that's the level of pedantry you want to argue about, sure. It doesn't change the fact that nuclear isn't the backbone of the UK grid, and that it is not feasible to bring it back in Germany, and that it never was and likely never will be economically competitive, especially not with renewables getting cheaper every year.
That is to say nothing about security risks, political dependencies and environmental impacts.
It's produced more power than coal, biomass, solar, and hydro combined this year and is the third largest behind wind and gas. There are plans to do more. This is in a country that isn't that into nuclear. In France over 70% is nuclear.
Economically competitive doesn't mean it's the best option. Renewables are basically useless without significant investment in energy storage. They also need replacing more often. Add these two together and you have very significant environmental and economic issues with "green energy". That's why countries like France and China are invested in nuclear and why everyone wants fusion.