- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
After years of wrangling, France has set out a new energy law that slashes its wind and solar power targets and drops a mandate for state-run energy provider EDF to shut down nuclear plants.
Because fossil fuel companies are lobbying for it. Renewables are cheap and quick to set up, every single solar panel immediately lowers the demand for oil/gas/coal a tiny bit.
Nuclear energy on the other hand takes ages to set up and is far more expensive per kWh than renewables. Every single euro spent on nuclear is one euro taken away from renewables.
Oh, and in countries with nuclear weapons programmes, nuclear energy is a way to stealthily increase the military budget.
False.
Renewable is better for fossil fuels company, as of now solar and wind require high subsidies for fossil fuel power plant to operate. You cannot go 100% renewable as the sun does not produce at night and sometimes there is no wind. You can go 100% nuclear instead, as nuclear works all the time and can be adjusted with demand.
This is changing rapidly, as battery technology improves and cost goes down, but we are not still there yet. Nuclear cost goes down as you build more nuclear. China is on the forefront of renewable energy but also builds the most nuclear power plant in the world for very cheap.
France will need to keep the know-how and improve the technology if they want to keep up with aging power plants.
To abandon nuclear in favor of renewable means building more batteries then we can produce in a cost effective way. France nuclear stabilize the European grid. Without it energy would cost much more.
Not a mystery that country with low energy price in Europe have nuclear and country with high energy price lack nuclear.
You just do not need to go 100% renewable immediately. As per the pareto principle: 80% of the result can be achieved with 20% of the effort.
Put up enough renewables NOW to achieve 80% green, decentralized energy. But since we are still very far off from that result, there is no need to waste money for nuclear power plants. We don’t even have enough renewables to result in negative energy prices, so there is no need for batteries just yet. Guess what happens the moment energy prices do become negative for large parts of the year:
Nuclear cannot be adjusted to demand at all by the way. It is extremely inflexible and does not handly varying demand well. Varying demand that will occur in the coming decades due to smart energy grids becoming a thing.
You also haven’t explained why the only countries who build nuclear in significant numbers also possess nuclear weapons. Nobody builds nuclear power plants for the climate.
As long as we aren’t at regular negative energy prices, it is more cost effective and better for the climate to invest into renewables. Once we are there, nuclear power plants are economically unviable due to their aforementioned inflexibility.
The only economical stopgap until we are fully renewable will be flexible emergency gas power plants that run for a couple of days/weeks per year at most. And due to the fact they are an order of magnitude cheaper than nuclear, you have vastly more resources for expanding battery storage and renewables.
With current and near future technology, it is cheaper to have that 20% being nuclear and the rest renewable and battery than to have only renewable and batteries. Not only cheaper, but also more environmentally friendly. Using fossil fuel is not really an alternative.
Nuclear can do grid load following (not peak due to thermal inertia but you will have batteries for that): nuclear power plant in France are required to be able to cycle to 30% power when needed.
If the target is to get to 80% renewable + batteries and 20% nuclear, then why do you think nuclear investments is removing money from renewable? Those are complementary technologies and we need both. By sabotaging nuclear we are just making it more expensive forcing polluting fossil fuels as the only alternative. Fighting nuclear is just delaying decarbonization.
Nuclear is the only technology that enabled a decarbonized electric grid in countries without natural low carbon source of energy such as hydroelectric.
The fact that solar is cheaper is inconsequential if you produce electricity when it is not needed and you do not when it is needed.
Nuclear costs more to produce, but lower the prices due to how the electricity market works.