- cross-posted to:
- green
- cross-posted to:
- green
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
This is all very interesting. But the truth is, the world is building nuclear because it’s cheap. Soon renewables will be cheaper, and states will abandon nuclear.
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Just copying the summary, don’t mind me:
All energy sources have negative effects. But they differ enormously in size: as we will see, in all three aspects, fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
From the perspective of both human health and climate change, it matters less whether we transition to nuclear power or renewable energy, and more that we stop relying on fossil fuels.
You can’t abandon nuclear until you have solved energy storage for wind and solar. And we have not solved that economically. Otherwise you need gas to power the grid when there is no wind/sun (what UK does). Nuclear is a base load production with over 90% up time (down for refueling every 1.5 years or so).
TBH I don’t really see that as a problem like most people do. In the niaive solution, you can just build excessive capacity. Build enough generators to always supply peak load, then turn them off when they are not needed.
Realistically you have a sophisticated system which includes some legacy nuclear diesel and coal, some wind/solar, some more efficient renewables like tidal power, and you always need at least one gas plant too, to stabilise the load. There’s demand side stuff you can do too, and many more tricks.
Nuclear is cheap right now but when the economy changes, engineers will use their powers to make the grid work fine with the cheapest power source available.
Thanks for the website. You can really see how unreliable wind is, and the crucial modulating role of gas. Wind is starting to look like a real red herring in the search for ethical cheap power. But it’s cheap, so they build it anyway, and the engineers just have to make it work. Tidal power should be much more reliable. It just needs more investment.
