this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
16 points (100.0% liked)
Green Energy
2163 readers
65 users here now
everything about energy production
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm very favorable to nuclear energy.
The main reason is that today the only countries with a low CO2 per kWh ratio are country with either a lot of hydro, a lot of nuclear or both.
You can check my claim here and look at yearly production. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
So today, if a country has maxed out their hydroelectricity production the only proved way to reduce significantly the CO2 emissions is to add nuclear in their mix.
Wind and solar is great for individual or communal use if we accept to live with the intermittency.
But right now we don't know how to compensate the intermittency without a lot of fossil fuel: gas, coal or oil. We can also use biomass but biomass also have a whole lot of issues and is not really free of carbon emissions either
The problem is that you can't extrapolate from countries that already have nuclear power plants to those that would need to start building them now.
If you start planning one now, it will be maybe done in 15 years and billions over budget. And in the mean-time nothing changes and business continues as usual.
If you take the same money and start building wind, solar, geothermal and battery storage you get an immediate effect and the result is more sustainable as well.
I also have such an issue with just looking at carbon footprinting.