Friday, December 5, 2014

A scary graph

Source
Whether or not you think growth in nuclear power is a smart play -- I think, on balance, it is -- nuclear energy production declining in absolute terms is bad, bad, bad news. It's going to eviscerate efforts to cut CO2 emissions via RE. You are going to end up -- as Germany has -- substituting low carbon renewable energy for low carbon nuclear energy. Leaving fossil fuels dominating the energy mix for decades to come. No es bueno.

6 comments:

  1. Bad indeed. Thanks for the info, I didn't know that.

    We really need to crack fusion.

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  2. Strongly favoring renewables here. Have you seen this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsgrahFln0s&feature=em-uploademail

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    1. Renewables are awesome, but we're on a clock here. I think the experience of Germany illustrates that if you go forward on renewables whilst backsliding on nuclear energy the overall carbon intensity of your economy ends up standing still.

      Both renewables and nuclear could expand by a factor of five and still have fossil fuels to take market share from. I really think which clean energy source is best is a question for the next generation. Our generation's struggle should be against fossil fuels.

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    2. Do you have a source for Germany's overall carbon intensity standing still?

      I agree with you that the German phase out of their nuclear power plants is a very bad thing.

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  3. On the positive side, the cost of renewables is being accelerated by deployment. If you have to deploy more renewables to account for reductions in nuclear generation, then this will steepen the cost reduction curve - potentially in the end leading to even more renewables being deployed than would otherwise have been the case.

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    1. But when you reduce nuclear generation, economies burn more fossil fuels. If fossil fuels were illegal, then phasing out nuclear would accelerate renewable development massively. As it is, that seems like a secondary or tertiary effect. The primary effect is more CO2, more global warming.

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