African countries feature prominently in the White House push to triple worldwide use of both nuclear and renewable energy.
When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that's also very much part of American branding.
Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.
I’m a renewable bro. I wanna see as much money pumped into as much infrastructure for renewables as possible. I wanna see solar on every building. I wanna see off-shore wind and tidal energy production. I’m keenly following development of clean, efficient, and cost-effective energy storage technologies, and much is being done in this space to support a future switch to full renewable reliance.
That won’t change the fact that we need on-demand energy now and we need to stop using coal and gas as soon as possible. We currently don’t have energy storage at scale. We will, but we don’t. So in the meantime, nuclear is probably the best option to pursue for use over the next couple of decades while we continue to invest in, and implement, renewables.
I will have to strongly disagree here. The timelines are actually the main reason why I would disqualify Nuclear power as a solution to energy, even as a temporary one.
The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years. Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety. So indeed, if we want to stop using fossil fuels asap, building solar, wind, and hydro, which come online in a matter of months (maybe years for hydro), is much faster.
Aggravating this are two further issues: Current Nuclear energy production is non-renewable, and supply problems are already known to occur at current energy production levels. Second, the global construction capacity is limited, probably to around current levels. Even if we do not push for faster construction times, the number of companies and indeed people who have the necessary expertise are already at full capacity, and again, expanding that would probably imply safety problems.
That is to say, currently running Nuclear power plants are save and clean, so by all means keep doing it until renewables take over. But expanding Nuclear power to solve the energy problem is a non-starter for me, due to the timeline and it being non-renewable. And that is before we start talking about the very real dangers of Nuclear power, which are not operational of course, but due to proliferation, war, and governmental or general societal instability (due to say, climate change).
Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety.
I think it's less that it would mean compromising on safety and more that it would mean compromising on the appearance of safety because we'd have to stop letting the courts delay construction while they indulge everybody who tries to sue to stop it with meritless claims.
Also -- and I say this as a Georgia Power ratepayer on the hook for the vast cost overruns for Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 -- we would need to import foreign labor or something because here in the US we are demonstrably too incompetent and corrupt to do it properly ourselves.
Exactly. I'm 100% on board with both renewables and nuclear, but the time to build nuclear would seem to have passed. We're a few decades too late.
That's not too say we shouldn't be building any new nuclear plants - in particular modern designs like SMRs, but I think it would be wiser to focus our energy now on large, grid-scale storage to help smooth out intermittent generation from renewables.
The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years. Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety
It also takes 20years for a tree to grow, so I guess we should stop planting trees too. Good logic.
The rest of what you are saying is ignorant at best. "Global construction capacity" is constrained to current levels. How convenient that we can only build exactly the number of nuclear reactors we are currently building. But we can build an unlimited amount of solar panels, wind turbines and "hyrdo."
How long do you think it takes to "build hydro?" If you ignore any and all environmental costs of flooding valleys, then sure I guess you could do it pretty quickly, you'd probably have to relocate hundreds of thousands of people, but sure that sounds more feasible then building a nuclear reactor.
Current Nuclear energy production is non-renewably because of cold-war era treaties against enrichment and breeder reactors. The timeline for nuclear fuel to run out if you allow breeders, is after the sun burns out. So that's a non-issue. Not to mention other theoretical sources of nuclear fuel that we don't bother even looking at because it's cheaper to burn more coal.
What exactly do you mean by "in the meantime"? What kind of timeline do you envisage for the large scale rollout of nuclear energy? Do you seriously think it'll be possible to roll out nukes faster than building some more storage?
Today, there is 413GW of nuclear capacity globally. Of that, 57GW is in China.
China plans to reach 300GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. Assuming linear growth, that number will be around 550GW by 2050 (more than double the current global nuclear capacity) There are currently 57 nuclear power plants under construction. 21 are in China. 1 is in the US.
Nuclear power isn't bad. I used to be anti-nuclear energy because of the specter of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, and Fukushima. But learning more about it, there haven't been many actual problems with nuclear energy.
Chernobyl happened because of mismanagement and arrogance. 3 mile happened because of a malfunction. Fukushima happened because of mismanagement and failure to keep up safety standards in case of natural events.
These are all things that can be mitigated to one extent or another. it's much cleaner than other forms of energy, outputs way more than solar or wind, and with modern technology can be extremely safe. I think we should be adopting nuclear, at least as a stopgap until renewable tech reaches higher output in efficiency.
Kinda annoyed that these investments are going into foreign countries, when we are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas. We should be building them here first to mitigate our own ghg contributions, then helping smaller countries build theirs.
I do still have concerns about waste removal and storage tho, but I'm sure we could figure that out if we actually wanted to. But I doubt we do, because "dA cOsTs" or some shit.
Chernobyl had such a far-reaching environmental impact. Beyond even the radioactive pollution stuff, it scared everyone away from nuclear power and back to fossil fuels for energy production. I sometimes wonder where we'd be wrt CO2 levels if nuclear energy adoption had continued along the same trend as it was before Chernobyl. Would we have had substantially more time to mitigate climate change? Maybe we'd have been in the same boat (or an equally bad boat) due to other factors; maybe it would have stymied renewables even more due to already having a readily available and well-established alternative to fossile fuels in nuclear power. Idk. But if someone wrote one of those what-if alternative history novels about the subject, I'd read the heck out of it.
Chernobyl had such a far-reaching environmental impact.
Ironically, the main direct impact (i.e. excluding the indirect, but far more important, policy impact you talked about) is that it basically created an involuntary nature preserve.
Anyone still worried about the safety of the method is an ignoramus. "Dying slowly to lung cancer and the environment cooking me alive is so much better than the one-in-a-billion chance of having to eat some prussian blue"
Waste removal is my biggest concern. Unless the plans to expand also come with ways to recycle the waste, we're just setting ourselves up for giant exclusion zones throughout the globe, most likely in small countries where the plants are imposed on them by foreign economic powerhouses and then they're told to figure the waste out themselves.
Not to mention "just bury it" is neither futureproof nor is it good for the non-human inhabitants of our planet; sure if those concrete containment cysts in the desert ever fail it will "only" be leaking radiation into the desert, but any desert is still home to hundreds of species of living things and its own complex ecosystem. "Desert" doesn't actually mean "devoid of life"; there are no good locations to bury it and forget it.
Let's talk about the absolute devastation mining rare materials does to ecosystems and the exploitation of third world countries that it's led to. We're already implicated in so much violence against the earth itself and colonialist exploitation, and I'm supposed to support gods know how much more of that for Uranium from Kazhakstan (45% of the worlds' production in 2021)? That's basically begging for more forever wars over energy resources in the middle east.
"We'll figure out long term solutions after the infrastructure is put in place" is how we got to where we are with fossil fuels AND landfills.
I'll fully support any plans to make a push toward nuclear, but the foremost concern of that push should be waste recycling. After that's figured out, everything else is small potatoes. It would even make the long-term costs cheaper than fighting for new material and figuring out million-year half-life hazardous waste disposal. A nearly unlimited energy supply that doesn't fuel wars and is safer than the current system? Sign me the fuck up.
Regarding waste; nuclear waste can be turned into diamond batteries.
If they manage to release, the idea is that small cell batteries can self-recharge themselves practically forever (20,000ish years?). Battery dead? Remove it, swap it, wait. Battery dead? Insert the one you removed previously, the Uranium inside replenished the charge.
Neat stuff given that it is made from waste byproduct.
I wouldn't necessarily mind having a reactor or two acting as base generators especially during the winter, but
In Germany we've been searching for a secure waste site since the first reactor went online in 1957. If we haven't found it yet, we never will.
There's not really a reason to hope for cost reduction of reactor construction once we do it at scale, because requirements and local acceptance are too heterogeneous to implement any sort of scaling construction. Every jurisdiction will have its own risk assessment and usually the locals are none too happy about a reactor close to them. I just don't see something happening in that regard. Wind turbines and solar panels on the other hand can be churned out in factories at scale, which is why they're so cheap, comparatively.
Therefore, personally I'd rather invest in green H2 as an energy storage solution. We can easily generate an enormous electricity surplus during the summer months, but lack long-term storage of the electricity. So we shut off solar and wind farms when they're over producing. Wouldn't it be neat to instead let them keep generating and use that surplus energy to power power-to-gas plants E. G. with H2? It's an enormously power-hungry process, but if you do it when power is basically free...
Oh wait, we're already doing that and it's already cost-effective. Now, if we were to take that process and build it at scale... for example by not spending 12-20 Bn 💶 to build another Flamanville, Olkiluoto or Hinkley Point C... I think that might actually work.
Bill Clinton used to do this. Set goals and agreements that were like 30 years away.
He did this alot.
This is not new and is basically a way to look like you are doing something, but you and your administration would be long gone before there can be any accountability.
Tbf, long term goals are a good thing. National planning having a lifespan of 4-8 years is fucking insane, and probably contributes non-trivial to federal expenditures and waste. We'd be better off if we could follow long term goals. But you're right, though, it was performative planning by and large.
Actual genuine question here. Has any US administration made a decades long plan like this, announced it to the public, and then a future administration saw said plan through to fruition?
I’ll believe it when I see it. I’d prefer that they build something modern rather than hauling out the tired old plant designs we’ve been using since the 70s.
Small modular reactors are modern. And it's where the majority of the research is happening.
It's a bit of a chicken and the egg situation right now. Once the factories ramp up, they'll be pumping out some of the cheapest power producers by MW ever designed.
Unfortunately, those factories can't ramp up until the sales start coming in, and the sales aren't coming in because without the factories going full steam ahead, it's incredibly expensive to make the reactors.
Solar and wind had the exact same problem back in the day. They just didn't have two separate lobbying groups trying to kill them off.
Fuck no. Why not real green energy which does not produce nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for thousands of years and where most places dont have a place to store it in?
Why not real green energy which does not produce nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for thousands of years and where most places dont have a place to store it in?
Because that's not a real issue. Not only is it true that we do have a perfectly-good place to store it that we refuse to use for no good reason, we don't actually need to store it at all because we ought to be reprocessing it instead.
Every place has a place to store it. It's pretty safe and easy to store and does not need to be significantly contained for that long of a period. It's relatively safe. "Real" green energy also produces a lot of waste and dangerous byproducts that "need to be" (read, should but often not) contained. Do you think solar panels grow on trees? No, the resources need to be mines and refined.
Besides, solar photocells have a limited lifetime. Recycling them is possible but expensive so people just make new ones instead. Kind of like plastics if you think about it.
What does any of what you just said have to do with the US making a pledge to increase global energy sustainability (energy and fossil fuels specifically being the crux of global catastrophe)
Sometimes I think posters just like to jab for rage bait
I mean this seems like around the time that billionaires have bunkered up and people are roaming the wasteland scavenging for food, shelter, and safety in the blazing heat
Anyone with basic knowledge about anything knows that diversification is generally a good thing, this applies to energy as well: you don't command the wind/sun and large scale electricity storage is to this day an unsolved problem. For all the big plans we have about a greener and carbon limited future, we need large amounts of dependable cheap and low-carbon energy, nuclear very much fits the bill (in complement to the other low-carbon energies).