If it gets them to shut down their coal plants, great. And I think that actually is the primary motivation. They need lots of power and they need to stop killing their citizens with smog from coal (as well as our planet).
I think it will cost them financially though. This won't come cheap. Half a trillion for about 1200 GW of capacity is a lot and not necessarily the best value for money. However, they have about that amount of coal to replace as well. The issue with wind and solar is that we're only adding in the order of a few hundred GW per year. China needs an order of magnitude more just to get rid of coal.
The interesting thing will be if production capacity for wind turbines and solar panels will grow quickly enough to make this investment unnecessary. One order of magnitude increase in production capacity would do the trick. Not trivial; and China is already going as fast as it can with this. But also not impossible. It's going to be a close race.
China might simply be betting on multiple horses here; which is the smart thing to do. I don't think they are picking winners here; just losers. Which would be coal. It needs to go, hence the need to fix 1000+ GW of power demand while also accounting for continued economic growth. They aren't ready to commit to that at COP 26 just yet. But the timing of this announcement is no coincidence either.
Another horse in the race would be fusion. Apparently there is some serious money flowing into some companies now. Helion just did a 500M series E: https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/helion-energy-will-use-500.... That may or may not work but it's kind of a really big deal if that hits commercial viability this decade rather than in 2050. And as the US has less of a coal problem at this point (most of it will be gone by the middle of this decade), nuclear is less urgent as a solution. And unlike nuclear, fusion actually might have a shot at being cost competitive with other renewables. Helion is pitching 0.01$/kwh. That's the right level of ambition here.
The cost picture is complex. Using nuclear they can build the plants next to the industry centers, replacing existing coal plans. They don't need to build batteries to address the intermittency of renewables. In addition 150 power plants being built at the same time might gain some benefit of scale, and might attract other countries to follow suit.
We need to compare the cost to what other countries are doing to achieve similar goals. Countries like Germany is planning to create green hydrogen in order to replace the current natural gas plants, and we don't know the price tag for that. Europe is currently also seeing the consequences of relying on natural gas and energy trading, with record high energy costs for the end consumer, despite building a lot of solar and wind farms. The high demand for natural gas is also creating additional problems for industries that depend on that limited resource, like agriculture. With uranium there isn't many other industries that compete for that resource.
The reason why it got so expensive is because we fell down the curve. Intentionally. So that we could fill our atmosphere with CO2 while we waited 40 years for wind and solar to become viable. The mind boggles.
> Helion is pitching 0.01$/kwh. That's the right level of ambition here.
Does Helion have a demonstrator plant or a pilot? Or even a prototype? All I see is ... nothing.
It is impossible for them to be in commercial operation in nine years even if they did have a working demonstrator. NIMBYism, fear of H-bombs, and the slow speed of regulation guarantee it.
China absolutely does need to replace its coal-powered electricity plants.
But it also needs a great deal more electricity, for a few reasons.
Away from the coast and the mega cities, there is still a lot of energy poverty.
If China is going to replace coal in iron smelting and steelmaking, it needs to electrolyze a lot of hydrogen.
It also needs electrolyzed hydrogen to replace fossil methane for making ammonia for fertilizer, and for wintertime peak electricity plants (and possibly for engines for ocean-going ships, if it can't use nuclear for them).
If it's going to capture the carbon from its cement plants, it needs power to do that.
Electrolyzed hydrogen and captured CO2 will have to be the new feedstocks for many industrial chemicals and plastics.
I don't think it's either-or with nuclear and wind/PV, it's not hedging bets, it's whatever works locally, ASAP and AMAP.
> The interesting thing will be if production capacity for wind turbines and solar panels will grow quickly enough to make this investment unnecessary. One order of magnitude increase in production capacity would do the trick.
This assumes massive advances in battery tech to support seasonal and week-to-week weather changes. Even the new iron-air tech is still very expensive - $300 million for enough capacity to power 50,000 homes for just one day.[0] By my rough calculations that's 28 trillion dollars to buy enough batteries for all homes in China, assuming 600 million homes, and 7 days of capacity.
But that's quite optimistic, because it's not that hard to get more than a week of unfavourable weather, and you don't want your country to shut down every time that happens.
Excuse my ignorance, but where did you get the 500 billion price tag? And why do you say it's expensive? It's rather cheap.
People keep saying how solar is the cheapest capacity to install, at 1 dollar per Watt. 1200 GW would be 1.2 trillions, and only offering around 240GW "constant" production, whereas nuclear is half the price to build but more like 1000 GW constant production
The other thing that might need to grow is multiple supply chains into specialized nuclear components by an order of magnitude. My gut says it’s actually easier to scale solar and renewables by an order of magnitude than those items.
Of course China might have the same motivations of many nuclear powers have - which is a desire to also maintain a baseline manufacturing capacity for nuclear technologies in general.
I don't get the hope for ramping up production capacity for wind turbines and solar panels 'fast enough'.
Supposedly this is all about climate change and limiting or even stopping emissions, to counter climate change, yes?
While these emissions can be especially annoying when they are near you, they work globally because they give a shit about borders. Supposedly, Yes?
So, from a global ecosystem point of view, considering 'cradle
to cradle' without any externalizations, what exactly is won by that, considering the emissions from producing and transporting all that stuff?
Wind turbines require large concrete foundations, you can't put them into the ground like a toothpick into a piece of cheese.
If not in some flat desert, stable roads for the construction and transport, requiring cutting down parts of the forest.
Same for the cables, no matter if over land, or underground transmission.
At Sea it's even more complicated and material intensive.
Solar is requiring large areas to be effective, similar considerations apply.
The production and transport of all that stuff, and the mining and refining of the necessary raw materials is causing emissions.
While of intermittent use, without storage, which again requires mining, refining, transport, production, transport, construction, maintenance, causing more emissions again.
Whose intermittency could be lessened by large HVDC super smart grid, but again, 'this doesn't grow on trees'!
One order of magnitude increase in production capacity would do the trick. At which magnitude of more emissions, counted over the whole lifecycle from mining raw materials, refining, producing, transporting, constructing, decommissioning?
Compared to a few 100(0) reactors, be they modular/small/gen-whatever/fast breeder/liquid salt/traveling wave/fusion/I don't care.
If the goal is to reduce emissions globally, nuclear it is!
If need be maybe implemented in a Hyman Rickover way, not some crazy lowest bidder contractors. That worked for the US-Navy, so far. Why shouldn't it for the world?
If this is The Emergency as it's supposed to be, it needs an emergency answer.
I suppose another geopolitical aspect of this is that China doesn't want to be dependent on other nations for fuel. If they became involved in a war or even just anger their trading partners in some way, the rest of the world can shut off their energy supply.
For that matter, even if they're on great terms with all their trading partners, those trading partners might ask themselves "why are we selling coal to some other country so they can get the benefit when we have to live with the CO2 emissions as if we had burned it ourselves?" To be honest, I don't understand why the U.S. exports coal at all; it just doesn't seem worth it. (Though I can see where the coal lobby might have something to say about it if such legislation was proposed.)
Given how dependable and safe nuclear is combined with the reduction in carbon it is well worth it. This move is much more sensible than expanding wind and solar on the same scale, and also much more predictable.
I think you answered your own question: energy policy is a multi-layered approach. There's no one silver-bullet, at least this century. It will take a lot of small steps. This is one of those instances where authoritarian governments can move faster.
Although that is a LOT of nuclear waste they will be creating. Hopefully the also advance waste storage technology in parallel.
That pollution is to make the stuff you buy in Walmart. As long as you as a consumer do not demand a label such as "made with green energy" and prefer those products, the polluting manufacturers will prevail.
If they do thorium then I am all for it. If not (so can feed their nuclear weaponizations) we all pray for the people over there. Their track records of industry accidents aren't that proud of.
As far as I know China didn't announce anything. Where is the official announcement?
The source is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035, nothing more. Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).
Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power. Even considering the load factors the picture is pretty clear.
Good for China. I hope it works out for them. China seems politically stable and already has nuclear weapons so there's really no additional risk here. I'm happy to sit back and learn from their mistakes.
I'm honestly surprised at the rose-coloured glasses many on HN view nuclear with.
Like even if the US was all-nuclear, the change in global emissions wouldn't be that high because the US accounts for <20% of global emissions and probably only a quarter of that is from power generation.
But here's another factor: if the US wasn't a consumer of fossil fuels, the only thing that changes is it becomes cheaper for everyone else and that probably increases consumption to the point where the emissions are near net-neutral.
And for that we have a bunch of reactors with terrible failure modes and unanswered questions about long-term reprocessing and/or storage of enrichment byproducts, the same for waste and we'd need to trust governments and corporations to manage it all.
The resistance to wearing a piece of fabric on your face while out in public by a significant portion of the population should tell you everything you need to know here: no amount of altruism will solve climate change. Economics will.
My bet is the long term future here is solar not nuclear. That's a deep topic. Those pointing out that sometimes it's night aren't factoring in expected improvements in energy storage tech nor thinking long term enough. You put the collectors in space and eventually run transmission lines to the ground. And no, I'm not kidding. If you feel like going down this rabbit hole, look up orbital rings.
It seems China figures out what's the best thing to do, and then just does it. There's no doubts or unnecessary debate about it.
It has been clear to anyone who is paying attention that nuclear power (even fission) is vastly superior to every other method in the long term. It is cleaner than coal/gas, more reliable than solar/wind, less environmentally disruptive than hydro.
Then why isn't everybody doing it? At least the countries with the know-how should be all in on it. USA, Germany, Japan, India, France, all of these should be building a hundred new reactors every year. But instead we are sitting on our assess while China marches on.
Nuclear reactor manufacturing is not a simple thing to ramp up quickly.
China is buying reactors from the US, France, Russia, and they have their own designs. They need to reserve pretty much all manufacturing capacity that exists and add more.
I have been saying this for quite some time: The future vision of an all-electric ground transportation system is between impossible and untenable without a massive scale-up in nuclear energy generation in places like the US.
Years ago, as I was trying to understand the reality of electric vehicles, among other things, I put together a model that simulates a fleet of 300 million electric vehicles charging across our various time zones. The model accounts for various percentages of vehicles slow charging overnight (typical at-home charging scenario) and the balance fast-charging. The model uses Tesla charging data (rate of charge, energy requirements, miles per kWh, etc.).
The result indicated we need 900 to 1400 GW in order to support a full transition to electric charging.
This is IN ADDTION TO what we produce today, which is in the order of 1200 GW. In other words, we need to ADD capacity, we can't magic-wand our way into this reality. In essence, we have to produce the effective energy provided today by gasoline and diesel. By this I mean, once you account for efficiency, the bottom line is gasoline/diesel are used to move a certain mass of vehicles a certain distance in a certain time every day. Whatever is required to do the same with electrics, that's what we need. This is new energy, we can't pull it out of the existing infrastructure.
And, speaking of infrastructure, it is important that this is, in many ways more about power than energy.
Why?
Because it takes power to charge N cars simultaneously in a given geographic region. Even if everyone slow-charges, the time period is finite, say, 8 hours max. This still translates to a requirement for power. The energy is what fills the bucket. Power is how fast you fill it. With so many vehicles plugged in at the same time, you need power over a reasonable period of time. Our grid cannot currently handle such a step change in power transportation. To put it simply: We need larger pipes.
This could also mean we need far more than the 900 to 1400 GW I think we do. That is because you have to deliver power, not energy over 24 hours.
Solar?
No. Not really. It can help, but, at scale, at the scale we need, I think I can very easily make the argument that if the goal is to have clean energy, solar at this scale is far from clean. I can't even imagine the billions of batteries we would need. And then, every N years, you have to deal with recycling or disposing of them.
This isn't a simple problem at all. Yet nuclear is, in my opinion, the ONLY technology that can actually deliver on a future vision of an all-electric transportation system.
Here's the problem: I don't know about Europe. In the US, in the time it would take us to build a single nuclear reactor (30 years?), China will likely build 300 of them, if not more. The efficiency and focus with which they execute on the obvious plan to achieve economic and technical superiority across the board is nothing less than awe-inspiring. While our politicians burn clock cycles with stupid power games and nonsense, China wakes up every day and puts one foot in front of the other. The only way to think of this is that they deserve the success they have achieved through hard work, focus and perhaps the most impressive national-scale entrepreneurial drive in the history of humanity.
I work with Chinese companies (as suppliers in the context of manufacturing) every day. The difference between us and them is absolutely unimaginable to anyone who isn't in this business. All I can say is that, if people in the West don't wake up and start voting for politicians who actually know what they fuck they are doing, the story of what's ahead isn't a good one. Notice that I am not identifying any specific party. In fact, a good starting point would be to fire almost everyone in government and bring in new blood with a new mandate.
I better stop here. I get too worked-up about this stuff. It pains me to see so many hard-working people suffer because the people in command of the ship are constantly engaged in power games and bullshit and ignore the fact that the boat is filling with water and will eventually sink.
I don't understand why people are focusing on nuclear now, and not 5 years ago or 10 years ago. What has changed?
If I understand correctly, technology hasn't changed. People want nuclear because either they don't think renewables can scale up quickly enough or because of the base load problem (renewables can't always provide energy on demand). Has any of that changed? Renewables generally are cheaper and have more scale now.
If we'd started 10 years ago, we might have some plants coming online soon.
Pretty simple, we were in the middle of a nuclear renaissance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_Uni...) in the US prior to Fukushima. Instead of informing the public of the facts (The plant was an antique, didn't meet safety standards, was built on a fault line), the media in the US used it as an opportunity for scare-mongering and politicized it.
In case of China, after Fukushima they decided to suspend generation 2 reactors and only build generation 3 reactors. But that didn't go smoothly and there were lots of delays. By the time generation 3 was ready, the trade war hit and a bunch of Chinese nuclear companies got blacklisted by the US. So they had to ditch foreign IP (French designs) and create their own IP (Hualong One) which also took time.
These 150 reactors we see today are the end of a long pipeline.
It is the last death throes of an industry coupled with some tech minded people thinking it's controversial and cool, even though the tech in reality is old and boring. The "silver bullet" to fix climate change, much like we saw with all manner of things last year with Covid.
The one chance to revive nuclear power in the west through Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Hinkley Point C, Flammanville and Olkiluoto 3 failed miserably with several of the major players now bankrupt.
China keeps dipping it's toes in nuclear to keep the option open but no real commitment, and this announcement of 150 reactors is no real change to the long term plans either.
In 2019, China had a new target of 200 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2035, which is 7.7% out of predicted total electricity generating capacity of 2600 GWe.
10 years ago was Fukushima. Which caused a reversal in nuclear production.
The 10-30 years before that (1980-2000) most of the environmentalists were campaigning against nuclear. Especially in light of Chernobyl and three mile.
The difference now is there's significant efforts into smrs (even if little think it's about thorium, it isn't), which means that nuclear could become scalable. If that happens, then it is a game changer because it's the only real downside of the technology.
Because China encountered major setback on their nuclear ambitions due to the US ban (China was previous planning to use US technology for their nuclear plants). It took a few years (>5) for them to mature domestic technology and scale up nuclear plants.
Nuclear power has very long lead-times. If you want to convince the public to build uranium fission power plants, you have to do it now or the time in which they would be relevant to the climate crisis will pass. That assumes the public will want current-generation uranium fission plants, which they did not want in the past.
This is a really shoddy article: It is in a "small caps" newsletter, mentions a couple specific small cap mining companies, and does not provide any sources for the assertion that China will build 150 nuclear power plants. It just jumps to "Buy these stonks."
If my estimates about the reactor size are correct, they're just going to make nuclear keep up with solar in terms of additional GWh delivered annually by the newly build plants, so it's less a focus on nuclear and more a diversification of their mix.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|4 years ago|reply
I think it will cost them financially though. This won't come cheap. Half a trillion for about 1200 GW of capacity is a lot and not necessarily the best value for money. However, they have about that amount of coal to replace as well. The issue with wind and solar is that we're only adding in the order of a few hundred GW per year. China needs an order of magnitude more just to get rid of coal.
The interesting thing will be if production capacity for wind turbines and solar panels will grow quickly enough to make this investment unnecessary. One order of magnitude increase in production capacity would do the trick. Not trivial; and China is already going as fast as it can with this. But also not impossible. It's going to be a close race.
China might simply be betting on multiple horses here; which is the smart thing to do. I don't think they are picking winners here; just losers. Which would be coal. It needs to go, hence the need to fix 1000+ GW of power demand while also accounting for continued economic growth. They aren't ready to commit to that at COP 26 just yet. But the timing of this announcement is no coincidence either.
Another horse in the race would be fusion. Apparently there is some serious money flowing into some companies now. Helion just did a 500M series E: https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/helion-energy-will-use-500.... That may or may not work but it's kind of a really big deal if that hits commercial viability this decade rather than in 2050. And as the US has less of a coal problem at this point (most of it will be gone by the middle of this decade), nuclear is less urgent as a solution. And unlike nuclear, fusion actually might have a shot at being cost competitive with other renewables. Helion is pitching 0.01$/kwh. That's the right level of ambition here.
[+] [-] belorn|4 years ago|reply
We need to compare the cost to what other countries are doing to achieve similar goals. Countries like Germany is planning to create green hydrogen in order to replace the current natural gas plants, and we don't know the price tag for that. Europe is currently also seeing the consequences of relying on natural gas and energy trading, with record high energy costs for the end consumer, despite building a lot of solar and wind farms. The high demand for natural gas is also creating additional problems for industries that depend on that limited resource, like agriculture. With uranium there isn't many other industries that compete for that resource.
[+] [-] jjoonathan|4 years ago|reply
The reason why it got so expensive is because we fell down the curve. Intentionally. So that we could fill our atmosphere with CO2 while we waited 40 years for wind and solar to become viable. The mind boggles.
[+] [-] tuatoru|4 years ago|reply
Does Helion have a demonstrator plant or a pilot? Or even a prototype? All I see is ... nothing.
It is impossible for them to be in commercial operation in nine years even if they did have a working demonstrator. NIMBYism, fear of H-bombs, and the slow speed of regulation guarantee it.
[+] [-] tuatoru|4 years ago|reply
But it also needs a great deal more electricity, for a few reasons.
Away from the coast and the mega cities, there is still a lot of energy poverty.
If China is going to replace coal in iron smelting and steelmaking, it needs to electrolyze a lot of hydrogen.
It also needs electrolyzed hydrogen to replace fossil methane for making ammonia for fertilizer, and for wintertime peak electricity plants (and possibly for engines for ocean-going ships, if it can't use nuclear for them).
If it's going to capture the carbon from its cement plants, it needs power to do that.
Electrolyzed hydrogen and captured CO2 will have to be the new feedstocks for many industrial chemicals and plastics.
I don't think it's either-or with nuclear and wind/PV, it's not hedging bets, it's whatever works locally, ASAP and AMAP.
[+] [-] rewq4321|4 years ago|reply
This assumes massive advances in battery tech to support seasonal and week-to-week weather changes. Even the new iron-air tech is still very expensive - $300 million for enough capacity to power 50,000 homes for just one day.[0] By my rough calculations that's 28 trillion dollars to buy enough batteries for all homes in China, assuming 600 million homes, and 7 days of capacity.
But that's quite optimistic, because it's not that hard to get more than a week of unfavourable weather, and you don't want your country to shut down every time that happens.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/iron-batt...
[+] [-] riazrizvi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flavius29663|4 years ago|reply
People keep saying how solar is the cheapest capacity to install, at 1 dollar per Watt. 1200 GW would be 1.2 trillions, and only offering around 240GW "constant" production, whereas nuclear is half the price to build but more like 1000 GW constant production
[+] [-] dv_dt|4 years ago|reply
Of course China might have the same motivations of many nuclear powers have - which is a desire to also maintain a baseline manufacturing capacity for nuclear technologies in general.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|4 years ago|reply
China is set to build 43 new coal plants in 2021, and they have a big power supply problem. So shutting any plants down is not happening anytime soon.
https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/
[+] [-] LargoLasskhyfv|4 years ago|reply
Supposedly this is all about climate change and limiting or even stopping emissions, to counter climate change, yes?
While these emissions can be especially annoying when they are near you, they work globally because they give a shit about borders. Supposedly, Yes?
So, from a global ecosystem point of view, considering 'cradle to cradle' without any externalizations, what exactly is won by that, considering the emissions from producing and transporting all that stuff?
Wind turbines require large concrete foundations, you can't put them into the ground like a toothpick into a piece of cheese.
If not in some flat desert, stable roads for the construction and transport, requiring cutting down parts of the forest.
Same for the cables, no matter if over land, or underground transmission.
At Sea it's even more complicated and material intensive.
Solar is requiring large areas to be effective, similar considerations apply.
The production and transport of all that stuff, and the mining and refining of the necessary raw materials is causing emissions.
While of intermittent use, without storage, which again requires mining, refining, transport, production, transport, construction, maintenance, causing more emissions again.
Whose intermittency could be lessened by large HVDC super smart grid, but again, 'this doesn't grow on trees'!
One order of magnitude increase in production capacity would do the trick. At which magnitude of more emissions, counted over the whole lifecycle from mining raw materials, refining, producing, transporting, constructing, decommissioning?
Compared to a few 100(0) reactors, be they modular/small/gen-whatever/fast breeder/liquid salt/traveling wave/fusion/I don't care.
If the goal is to reduce emissions globally, nuclear it is!
If need be maybe implemented in a Hyman Rickover way, not some crazy lowest bidder contractors. That worked for the US-Navy, so far. Why shouldn't it for the world?
If this is The Emergency as it's supposed to be, it needs an emergency answer.
Solar/Wind it isn't.
[+] [-] elihu|4 years ago|reply
For that matter, even if they're on great terms with all their trading partners, those trading partners might ask themselves "why are we selling coal to some other country so they can get the benefit when we have to live with the CO2 emissions as if we had burned it ourselves?" To be honest, I don't understand why the U.S. exports coal at all; it just doesn't seem worth it. (Though I can see where the coal lobby might have something to say about it if such legislation was proposed.)
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnchristopher|4 years ago|reply
Am I reading that right that the US has less then 4 years of coal output ?
[+] [-] SavantIdiot|4 years ago|reply
Although that is a LOT of nuclear waste they will be creating. Hopefully the also advance waste storage technology in parallel.
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jansen312|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway210222|4 years ago|reply
Since 1GWa* ≈ 8 million tonnes of CO₂ †, this is about a billion tonnes saved every year.
Sadly, we're about 3,000 Gt of CO₂ in excess in the atmosphere.
*: GWa: 1 GW 24h/d, every day, for a year
†: or about 1 Giza pyramid
[+] [-] natmaka|4 years ago|reply
The source is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035, nothing more. Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).
Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power. Even considering the load factors the picture is pretty clear.
Complements: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industr...
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industr...
(Thanks to Y. Marignac for part of the data)
[+] [-] dharmaturtle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phtrivier|4 years ago|reply
Now all the nuclear plants will be in state-controlled dictatorships with a disdain for truth.
But I'm pretty sure Greenpeace will organize mediatized flash mobs in tienenman square, sure ?
What could possibly go wrong ?
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
I'm honestly surprised at the rose-coloured glasses many on HN view nuclear with.
Like even if the US was all-nuclear, the change in global emissions wouldn't be that high because the US accounts for <20% of global emissions and probably only a quarter of that is from power generation.
But here's another factor: if the US wasn't a consumer of fossil fuels, the only thing that changes is it becomes cheaper for everyone else and that probably increases consumption to the point where the emissions are near net-neutral.
And for that we have a bunch of reactors with terrible failure modes and unanswered questions about long-term reprocessing and/or storage of enrichment byproducts, the same for waste and we'd need to trust governments and corporations to manage it all.
The resistance to wearing a piece of fabric on your face while out in public by a significant portion of the population should tell you everything you need to know here: no amount of altruism will solve climate change. Economics will.
My bet is the long term future here is solar not nuclear. That's a deep topic. Those pointing out that sometimes it's night aren't factoring in expected improvements in energy storage tech nor thinking long term enough. You put the collectors in space and eventually run transmission lines to the ground. And no, I'm not kidding. If you feel like going down this rabbit hole, look up orbital rings.
[+] [-] 93po|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perryizgr8|4 years ago|reply
It has been clear to anyone who is paying attention that nuclear power (even fission) is vastly superior to every other method in the long term. It is cleaner than coal/gas, more reliable than solar/wind, less environmentally disruptive than hydro.
Then why isn't everybody doing it? At least the countries with the know-how should be all in on it. USA, Germany, Japan, India, France, all of these should be building a hundred new reactors every year. But instead we are sitting on our assess while China marches on.
[+] [-] Daniel_sk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|4 years ago|reply
China is buying reactors from the US, France, Russia, and they have their own designs. They need to reserve pretty much all manufacturing capacity that exists and add more.
[+] [-] robomartin|4 years ago|reply
Years ago, as I was trying to understand the reality of electric vehicles, among other things, I put together a model that simulates a fleet of 300 million electric vehicles charging across our various time zones. The model accounts for various percentages of vehicles slow charging overnight (typical at-home charging scenario) and the balance fast-charging. The model uses Tesla charging data (rate of charge, energy requirements, miles per kWh, etc.).
The result indicated we need 900 to 1400 GW in order to support a full transition to electric charging.
This is IN ADDTION TO what we produce today, which is in the order of 1200 GW. In other words, we need to ADD capacity, we can't magic-wand our way into this reality. In essence, we have to produce the effective energy provided today by gasoline and diesel. By this I mean, once you account for efficiency, the bottom line is gasoline/diesel are used to move a certain mass of vehicles a certain distance in a certain time every day. Whatever is required to do the same with electrics, that's what we need. This is new energy, we can't pull it out of the existing infrastructure.
And, speaking of infrastructure, it is important that this is, in many ways more about power than energy.
Why?
Because it takes power to charge N cars simultaneously in a given geographic region. Even if everyone slow-charges, the time period is finite, say, 8 hours max. This still translates to a requirement for power. The energy is what fills the bucket. Power is how fast you fill it. With so many vehicles plugged in at the same time, you need power over a reasonable period of time. Our grid cannot currently handle such a step change in power transportation. To put it simply: We need larger pipes.
This could also mean we need far more than the 900 to 1400 GW I think we do. That is because you have to deliver power, not energy over 24 hours.
Solar?
No. Not really. It can help, but, at scale, at the scale we need, I think I can very easily make the argument that if the goal is to have clean energy, solar at this scale is far from clean. I can't even imagine the billions of batteries we would need. And then, every N years, you have to deal with recycling or disposing of them.
This isn't a simple problem at all. Yet nuclear is, in my opinion, the ONLY technology that can actually deliver on a future vision of an all-electric transportation system.
Here's the problem: I don't know about Europe. In the US, in the time it would take us to build a single nuclear reactor (30 years?), China will likely build 300 of them, if not more. The efficiency and focus with which they execute on the obvious plan to achieve economic and technical superiority across the board is nothing less than awe-inspiring. While our politicians burn clock cycles with stupid power games and nonsense, China wakes up every day and puts one foot in front of the other. The only way to think of this is that they deserve the success they have achieved through hard work, focus and perhaps the most impressive national-scale entrepreneurial drive in the history of humanity.
I work with Chinese companies (as suppliers in the context of manufacturing) every day. The difference between us and them is absolutely unimaginable to anyone who isn't in this business. All I can say is that, if people in the West don't wake up and start voting for politicians who actually know what they fuck they are doing, the story of what's ahead isn't a good one. Notice that I am not identifying any specific party. In fact, a good starting point would be to fire almost everyone in government and bring in new blood with a new mandate.
I better stop here. I get too worked-up about this stuff. It pains me to see so many hard-working people suffer because the people in command of the ship are constantly engaged in power games and bullshit and ignore the fact that the boat is filling with water and will eventually sink.
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
If I understand correctly, technology hasn't changed. People want nuclear because either they don't think renewables can scale up quickly enough or because of the base load problem (renewables can't always provide energy on demand). Has any of that changed? Renewables generally are cheaper and have more scale now.
If we'd started 10 years ago, we might have some plants coming online soon.
[+] [-] oceanplexian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|4 years ago|reply
These 150 reactors we see today are the end of a long pipeline.
David Fishman is an expert on this topic. Thread: https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/12939610958922792...
[+] [-] Gwypaas|4 years ago|reply
The one chance to revive nuclear power in the west through Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Hinkley Point C, Flammanville and Olkiluoto 3 failed miserably with several of the major players now bankrupt.
China keeps dipping it's toes in nuclear to keep the option open but no real commitment, and this announcement of 150 reactors is no real change to the long term plans either.
In 2019, China had a new target of 200 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2035, which is 7.7% out of predicted total electricity generating capacity of 2600 GWe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
So with about 50 GWe from 50 reactors today adding another 150 gives you the same goal of about 200 GWe.
[+] [-] godelski|4 years ago|reply
The 10-30 years before that (1980-2000) most of the environmentalists were campaigning against nuclear. Especially in light of Chernobyl and three mile.
The difference now is there's significant efforts into smrs (even if little think it's about thorium, it isn't), which means that nuclear could become scalable. If that happens, then it is a game changer because it's the only real downside of the technology.
[+] [-] liuliu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsmith|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 99_00|4 years ago|reply
Wind and solar were rolled out at state and national scale.
[+] [-] account4mypc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eunos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] korantu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolspot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tade0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] DeathArrow|4 years ago|reply
20 years later we still use not so efficient fision technology.
[+] [-] pfdietz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skmurphy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rllearneratwork|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afroboy|4 years ago|reply