I'm sure there are examples of places where neither Wind, Solar nor Hydro is viable. But looking at the EU, it doesn't seem to be the case here and (without looking very deep into it) I'd expect that to transfer to the vast majority of the world. Especially with HVDC for continental-scale electricity transport and the introduction of grid-based storage in the form of P2G (or something else), it's possible to even things out. There are almost no countries which are deploying as much renewable energy as possible, even with current grid-tech. And then it does quickly become a "nuclear vs renewables" issue.
Looking around in the EU, many (often more to the right, as opposed to the greens that often occupy more the left side of the spectrum and tend to be anti-nuclear) don't particularly want renewables and see great potential in nuclear instead, using it to dismiss the "green crap". Countries that push more heavily for nuclear seem to neglect renewables and countries investing in renewables often care little for expanding nuclear.
The grid deployment & economic characteristics of nuclear & renewables (solar, wind, not hydro) also clash, with them not playing very nice with each other resulting in the need to throttle one or the other without any reduced costs. Both also need some sort of storage if they're the major electricity provider. France heavily depends on pumped hydro for this purpose.
Maintaining existing nuclear capacity is very reasonable, but looking at how old the reactors (in the EU and America) are means that it's likely we'll have to replace the majority in the next 10-20 years. France is already having major issues (partially due to age) [1] and isn't expanding renewables enough. It's investing billions in new nuclear plants instead, which (at least based on the last decades) are going to take much longer than planned, be much more expensive and will some of them will not be finished.
Thus I expect nuclear energy to play a very small role in 2050.
I think this take generalizes for most of Europe, North America and richer non-asian[2] countries. Poor countries are unlikely to build a lot of major nuclear capacity due to price issues and concerns from the major global players about security (combined with lower expectations for grid reliability and an expected slower phaseout of fossil-fuel power plants).
To your last paragraph: While it's true that this can be used to divide, inefficient solutions that are unlikely to work are also used as distractions from doing something (and giving the illusion of solving the problem). Looking at E-Fuels, which are getting pushed as a reason to continue selling conventional gas vehicles to the masses or "Clean Coal" (carbon capture at the coal plant) to continue operating coal plants unchanged. Focusing on banning single-use plastic bags as a green action (which does have benefits but does not reduce emissions in most cases) and buying ineffective carbon offsets to quickly "greenify" your company without investing much in reducing emissions. There are many "solutions" offered that won't help (serving as reason to not do more) and at least in part I see some advocacy of construction of new power plants "in the future"™ (when it's not my financial/political/hot topic issue anymore) as doing the same. Not all, many are genuine, but some.
[2]: South Korea & China have seen less difficulties with building nuclear, but haven't been without. I don't know enough to say if these difficulties will lead to a major decline nuclear construction in combination with renewables are continually getting cheaper.
There's your problem. Europe doesn't generalize, and that's my entire point. Nowhere does. Europe benefits from warm winds. Often London is warmer than NYC despite being the significantly further north. The benefit here is lots of wind and far milder climates. It is the reason Europeans frequently don't have air conditioning (changing) but most Americans do. The US is warmer on average but also, generally, has larger seasonal swings in temperature. Hydro power is also notoriously non-homogeneous (especially considering environmental factor). For example, a significant part of the US (the part almost no one lives in) is a giant desert.
> Countries that push more heavily for nuclear seem to neglect renewables and countries investing in renewables often care little for expanding nuclear.
Can you give an example of such a country? France is one of the lowest emitters in Europe (even with current issues). France and Sweden draw significant amounts of power from hydro and nuclear. France, currently, is getting ~100gCo2eq/kWhr (and previously was <30) while Germany is 210. Britain is 180, Spain is 230, Portugal is 330, Italy is >300, and Poland is >500. If your concern is with France I believe you need to get your priorities straight. The majority of Europe emits multiples of times that of France and it has been this way for decades. So I'm not sure why you feel you need to pick on them. When the other countries are producing less (or even in the same ballpark) then we can talk.
My entire argument is that this heterogeneity makes the problem of choosing the right power source rather difficult. You can't just look up average (or median) prices and apply them unilaterally. Doing so comes off as extremely naive because, again, first order thinking is not helpful here. Complex problems require complex solutions.
And I need to make this absolutely and abundantly clear: I AM NOT SAYING NUCLEAR EVERYWHERE. I explicitly said we should build as much renewable as possible. I will not be upset if the total amount of nuclear power, globally, is zero. If you believe anything less, I think you gravely misread my comment. I think you may have missed this point and confused my being okay with nuclear as being a nuclear bro. So there really isn't much to argue with here (besides calling the kettle black) because I'm not nuclear gung-ho. Forgive me, but it is often frustrating that when I make the slightest argument in favor of nuclear I get responses as if I proposed a nuclear vs renewables argument. Again, I explicitly stated that this is not the case.
I don't understand your argument. The EU is significantly smaller than the US and the US has much more climate variation across its area. Moreover integrating the EU energy grids is more difficult considering they are separate countries. Still it's happening and not due to government policies, but because it is good investment to connect e.g. Norway to Germany.
In the US it could be much easier to build an integrated grid. There have been many simulations that showed one could fulfil the US electricity needs based on renewables and overprovisioning alone. Any storage makes it actually cheaper.
I don't understand your argument tbh. Europe is roughly the same size as the US and is about twice as dense. The density means that power demand is significantly higher and you need more frequent generators. The increased sparsity and climate variation of the US makes it more difficult to build a grid all together. But both the US and EU have interconnected grids so I'm not sure what you're saying here.
No one was arguing against interconnected grids. I was arguing that you don't want to generate power in California and use that power in Maine. Maybe that's the issue? While this is possible, you not only are losing a lot of power in transit, Maine would be at serious risk for power outages. Both distance and climate variation play a role here as both these factors make it easier for a grid to go down. Let's say there is a 1% chance of outage per 100 miles of grid. Well you got about 2500 miles to cross.
Also, the US is federated. I'm not sure if the politics make it any easier than in Europe. In our example Maine is beholden to at least 10 states. If something happens you know those states are demanding they get power first. The federal government (president) isn't just a dictator who can make the states act uniformly and in the best interest of the country as a whole. It's really best to think of the US as somewhere between a country and the EU itself. It was set up to be more like the EU in the first place but power has consolidated over time.
Not sure what you want to say with your list, but Nuclear shares the low carbon aspects of renewables but is by definition not one.
This is the list of European countries looking to build nuclear power announced in the last few years:
- France
- Finland
- United Kingdom
- Poland
- Hungary
- Czech Republic
Of these countries only Finland is also strongly pushing renewables. The UK is a bit weird.
> So I'm not sure why you feel you need to pick on them.
Because France is failing bad on electricity policy. Their existing electricity system is mostly made up of old nuclear plants that are nearing their end of life and will get increasingly unreliable. It's not clear how France will replace them in a reasonable time frame with new nuclear power plants (long build times are a huge issue and to few are announced to replace the existing reactors), leading to it becoming a net-importer from net-exporter (we're already seeing this happening). This is one of the factors currently driving up electricity prices around Europe and will be a major strain on the European grid. Because most nuclear power plants are old around the western world, this a worrying not just for France which bet hard on nuclear and should be very glad that it did at the time.
There are also many other countries which are basically making little effort to move away from fossil fuels for electricity and that's worse for the environment (but better for the grid). But they're obviously doing the wrong thing in regards to climate. France is not obvious.
> Complex problems require complex solutions.
Yes. But the pricing behavior of nuclear plants compared to wind and solar is extremely similar, leading to similar issues and concern. Most of the cost is capex, little opex or marginal. This makes overbuilding unattractive, especially when the capex is very high as in nuclear leading to either requiring power plants with low capex, high marginal costs (like gas), expansion of storage (historically mostly in the form of hydro) or relying on an otherwise more diversified grid to even things out. And then it becomes much easier to compare pricing as compared to e.g. gas plants.
My impression is that often the broad strokes of policy are (while informed by deep analysis) more formed by political beliefs and motivations than careful analysis. When germany started to deploy solar & wind with the goal of making them a significant portion of the power grid, this was in hindsight a good move but not supported by the facts. Both were very expensive (with no expectation of them getting so cheap) and no grid operator thought that the grid could handle more than a few percent of renewables. The move away from nuclear from the 70s onwards was also very much based on public opinion & fears, not on quantifiable data on risks. The move toward nuclear before that was also born out of hopes for very cheap electricity ("too cheap to meter") that didn't really pan out as much as hoped.
> I AM NOT SAYING NUCLEAR EVERYWHERE.
I am reading your comment as saying it's not nuclear vs. renewables, both can work in some circumstances. And I believe that due to production characteristics on the power grid, it is a nuclear vs. renewables issue in the grid. Additionally, that countries are looking at nuclear options that are unlikely to work (keepin' an eye on the historical trend for construction) will downscale expansion of renewables (if you're planning for 30% nuclear, you don't need as much renewables) and thus lead to more fossil fuel capacity renaming in use.
It's not out of the question that smaller, more modular reactors built in a big factory somewhere might be able to improve things for nuclear power plants and make them reasonable options in terms of build times and costs, but I'm doubtful.
Looking around in the EU, many (often more to the right, as opposed to the greens that often occupy more the left side of the spectrum and tend to be anti-nuclear) don't particularly want renewables and see great potential in nuclear instead, using it to dismiss the "green crap". Countries that push more heavily for nuclear seem to neglect renewables and countries investing in renewables often care little for expanding nuclear.
The grid deployment & economic characteristics of nuclear & renewables (solar, wind, not hydro) also clash, with them not playing very nice with each other resulting in the need to throttle one or the other without any reduced costs. Both also need some sort of storage if they're the major electricity provider. France heavily depends on pumped hydro for this purpose.
Maintaining existing nuclear capacity is very reasonable, but looking at how old the reactors (in the EU and America) are means that it's likely we'll have to replace the majority in the next 10-20 years. France is already having major issues (partially due to age) [1] and isn't expanding renewables enough. It's investing billions in new nuclear plants instead, which (at least based on the last decades) are going to take much longer than planned, be much more expensive and will some of them will not be finished.
Thus I expect nuclear energy to play a very small role in 2050.
I think this take generalizes for most of Europe, North America and richer non-asian[2] countries. Poor countries are unlikely to build a lot of major nuclear capacity due to price issues and concerns from the major global players about security (combined with lower expectations for grid reliability and an expected slower phaseout of fossil-fuel power plants).
To your last paragraph: While it's true that this can be used to divide, inefficient solutions that are unlikely to work are also used as distractions from doing something (and giving the illusion of solving the problem). Looking at E-Fuels, which are getting pushed as a reason to continue selling conventional gas vehicles to the masses or "Clean Coal" (carbon capture at the coal plant) to continue operating coal plants unchanged. Focusing on banning single-use plastic bags as a green action (which does have benefits but does not reduce emissions in most cases) and buying ineffective carbon offsets to quickly "greenify" your company without investing much in reducing emissions. There are many "solutions" offered that won't help (serving as reason to not do more) and at least in part I see some advocacy of construction of new power plants "in the future"™ (when it's not my financial/political/hot topic issue anymore) as doing the same. Not all, many are genuine, but some.
[1]: https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/edfs-woes-are-a-bigger-l..., https://www.ft.com/content/0df04c06-83c0-4080-a68b-c00fd4bc4...
[2]: South Korea & China have seen less difficulties with building nuclear, but haven't been without. I don't know enough to say if these difficulties will lead to a major decline nuclear construction in combination with renewables are continually getting cheaper.