World News

Profitability is so much not the point here and also, there's no reason for different energy production sources (especially ones that are base power vs incidental power) to be in conflict. Do both of them.

That's not difficult. Nuclear is extremely expensive.

With renewables you just sell it to the grid for whatever gas generated electricity is going for. Which is currently still a fucking lot. Thanks Russia.

K, but this isn't about profits. This is about not destroying the environment, which nuclear can help with (you know if nobody bombs the plant)

Nuclear is the future. Stop trying to deny it. We should all be running it by now this shit was made like 60 years ago. But no, we'll just eat smog I guess. Damn my feeds are kind of depressing today.

Gotta love anti nuclear activists getting more and more desperate. You're being decarbonised. Please do not resist.

Its a relatively recent development however since the panels and turbines got quite a bit cheaper. Nowadays solar/wind ends up fairly similar and Nuclear is about 3x the price (with gas being more and coal being nearly 7x more). That is only some of the story as you need some storage as well but it doesn't end up in favour of Nuclear. 15 years ago Nuclear was a clear win, its just not anymore the price of Solar come down fast.

If we had an energy system owned by the people and not ran for profits, nuclear would be a viable, and probably even the preferred, option. We do not. We're probably going to have to fix that to get a practical and reliable clean energy grid.

If we measured the amount of destruction to our environment that fossil fuels cost long-term I bet they'd stop being profitable really quick.

Who fucking cares about profit, our planet is dying.

Profit doesn't equal good. Renewables take a lot of materials and fabrication to upkeep. Im sure theres more money to be made in renewable than there is in nuclear, that doesn't imply one is better than the other.

Everyone seems to be focused on electricity production, but ammonia production (ie nitrogen fixation) for fertilizer is often overlooked. Right now it is accomplished mostly with natural gas. If we're supposed to do it instead with wind and solar, we're going to have to rely on simple and inefficient electrolysis of water to generate the hydrogen needed for the Haber process. Nuclear power plants have the advange of producing very high temperature steam, which allows for high temperature electrolysis, which is more efficient.

When you consider our fertilizer needs, it becomes clearer that nuclear power will have to play the predominant role in the transition away from fossil fuels.

This is such a weird thing to research because a government (or governments) can directly or almost directly control what is profitable in a society based upon what is needed.

Oh shit, can you imagine if you don't exclude all the fckn costs your fckn process causes you might fckn be mire expensive? Really? Surprise?

What about when the grid is almost entirely renewables? Is nuclear cheaper than just storage? What about storage one it's already been implemented to the point of resource scarcity?

More profitable AND safer. Humans are too stupid, lazy and bureaucratic to use nuclear.

I wonder how this determination is affected by the boondoggle that is the public funding of nuke plant construction with huge overruns paid for by consumers.

Really interesting and quite easy to read article. In fact, the french energy policy is to invest in new "little" nuclear plants. I'm not sure our politics will consider these scientifical comments...

That's pretty damn cool to hear.

I wish my country (Germany) hadn't crash-shutdown the nuclear power plants we still had after Fukushima and instead shut down the coal/gas ones but eh... at the time, I even agreed with them, but that was at a time when climate disasters were far less prominent on everyone's minds. That now renewables are starting to pull ahead in most things is amazing.

A big problem to solve now will be how to swap the majority of the world away from coal/gas.

So first off, the source of this article being pv-magazine makes me immediately skeptical about unbiased reporting. This part really gets me though:

The availability of this electrical source is also questioned in view of the increasingly frequent droughts expected in the coming years, causing, in particular, low river flows and therefore associated problems of cooling power plants.

And availability is not a problem with renewables then? If not the central problem? Hydroelectric is probably the most reliable of the renewables, but then we have the aforementioned problem of low river flows. Droughts could even affect pumped hydro: a much-touted solution to availability problems with wind and solar. For crying out loud, present both sides of the argument fairly! /end rant

At any rate, I can get on board the idea that in terms of adding new generating capacity, renewables may be the most competitive option at the moment? They have come a long way in a short time, though they still face major challenges on the energy storage front.

But in terms of getting away from existing fossil fuel-based power generation, is nuclear not an attractive option? The infrastructure is already there, and would essentially have to be largely abandoned as sunken assets by power utilities switching to something like wind or solar right?

Consider your average coal plant. It is a centralized heat source powering steam turbines connected to large generators and a giant transformer station feeding power out over a network of high voltage transmission lines.

What is a nuclear plant then? It is a centralized heat source powering steam turbines connected to large generators and a giant transformer station feeding power out over a network of high voltage transmission lines. I'm thinking at least some of the existing hardware could be repurposed for nuclear to leverage what already exists? Am I wrong?