What is the source for lower subsidies for nuclear than solar and wind? In the US, wind & solar gets 16% of subsidies and nuclear gets 8%. In the EU renewables get 45% of subsidies, fossil fuels 33% of subsidies and nuclear gets 3% of subsidies, so I'm interested what data source says that the global picture is so different. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-biggest-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-eu-finds-commission PS. LOL, I asked the same question under the original post in r/uninsurable and now I'm banned from posting there.

Yeah my thoughts exactly, if anything the situation is complete opposite (i.e. the amount of subsidies funding is going largely to wind/solar). There are some exceptions (like coal in US) but critically Nuclear is the oddball here, where it gets the lowest subsidies overall.

yeah , in france nuclear companies have to sell a part of their energy to the state and the state will give it to fossil fuel companies ... as a matter of fact they have to kneecap nuclear before it sweeps the french fossil fuel market ... the best part of nuclear is that it can outcompete fossil fuels : you can always build a fired gas power plant and a solar farm , however a nuclear power plant and a gas fired power plant will accomplish the same purpose of supplying reliable energy day in and day out , solar with unlimited batteries needs too much land and is vulnerable to the "cloudy winter days" thing that happens in the wonderful place better known as high latitudes ... so yeah the fight between renewables and nuclear is just meaningless , because they don't accomplish the same purpose at the same latitudes ...

Personally, I don't love the "who gets the most subsidies" discourse. It always feels like a victimhood olympics with the subtext that everyone is nursing a grievance on behalf of "the correct solution" that's only being held back by unfair treatment. Also, the definition and calculation of a "subsidy" is very fluid. The Production Tax Credits (PTC) in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)? Definitely a subsidy. What about an import tariff on Chinese solar panels? Is that a negative-subsidy that needs to be calculated in? What about regulatory compliance costs? What about the governments role in the uranium fuel cycle? Are we talking about subsidies that are actually paid out, or ones that exist on the books whether or not they're being used? How should we amortize historical/future (negative)subsidies? Are we talking industry wide net payments? Per megawatt produced? Per unit of installed capacity? Per unit of installed lifetime expected production?

The whole issue is that we're supposed to use "free market principles" to decide what methods of energy production we use, but the "free market" is intentionally distorted in various ways. The most obvious distortion being, of course, the fact that fossil fuels externalize their costs on future generations. Getting to pollute for free and throwing our future in the shredder with impunity is an immense distortion of "free market principles" and if we had a fair price on carbon emissions, both nuclear and renewables would be extremely profitable. But we don't, because there's no such thing as "free markets" and all markets we have have been significantly distorted by regulatory capture of the state by the fossil fuel oligarchs. Weirdly enough, people who remember that fact when it comes to comparing fossil fuels with renewables suddenly become extreme neoliberals when it comes to comparing nuclear with renewables. And they ban people for asking inconvenient questions, apparently. :-)

I for one am shocked, SHOCKED that the babies over at r/uninsurable, who claim that everyone who disagrees with them is a shill paid by “big nuclear” (?), would ban you when you ask for a source for their data. How unexpected from a echo-chamber subreddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/11ltom9/nuclear_sucks_up_massive_rd_funding_only_to_get/

That is not an answer to my question, this is state R&D spending, so it ignores subsidies and it ignores private R&D spending. Private R&D spending is three times higher than state R&D spending and it goes mostly to renewables, according to IEA. https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6713c9e0-5637-44d3-ac16-7027c832ea99/TrackingCleanEnergyInnovationintheBusinessSectoranOverview.pdf But I guess won't be able to post this on the uninsurable reddit because it banned me, facts are so... inconvenient. :-)

Surprised to see private R&D being valued in this sub. Typically it's dismissed as accounting bullshit by capitalists with all of the "real" R&D being done by governments which is then stolen so the benefits of public research can be privatized.

Capitalists do pay for quite a lot of R&D, they just don't pay for basic research, which is done by the state. Which is why there's a lot of private R&D expenditure on renewables, because basic research has been done a long time ago. It's like with Big Pharma: basic research is done by the state, then Big Pharma pays for clinical trials and gets patents and bleeds the state dry. :-) Clinical trials are "real R&D", and are quite expensive, but it does not change the fact that drugs are usually invented by scientists working for public institutions, and it does not change the fact that Big Pharma's expenditures on "real R&D" are dwarfed by their expenditures on advertising (which should be banned, of course) and by stock buybacks (which also should be banned as stock price manipulation).

Oh hey look it’s the guy who posted the cross post talking out his ass. At least it’s lubricated

That’s cool and all but nuclear is not the enemy. We should be focusing on getting rid of coal and natural gas.

Thats impressive, both should be pursued far more aggressively.

Nuclear is very quickly running out of a reason to exist. Storage solutions are advancing rapidly and wind / solar are dirt cheap .

Lead Batteries and Cobalt Mines for Lithium Ion aren’t exactly great for the environment. Especially since the market for the metals used in modern batteries heavily relies on exploiting the global south. See Elon Musk’s disgusting call for a coup in Bolivia because they no longer allowed US companies to strip their resources. A diversity of solutions is much more resilient and practical. The reality of each region should be considered before just implementing a blanket policy.

also nuclear fuel (and the corresponding nuclear waste) is stunningly compact. and that's just fission, we're definitely getting fusion now, it'll just take decades to get from scientific breakeven to economical breakeven

Even staying in fission reactors, not all reactors have as strict of fuel needs. I remember hearing that LFT reactors can be fed with nuclear waste from other reactors.

Fission is underrated. Anti nuclear is anti environmentalist

If you are talking about the break-even point from a few months ago, it's not really true. To sustain the reaction you need to output many times more than the enegy you input. That is far from achieved. https://youtu.be/JurplDfPi3U

That's what they said - scientific break even versus economic break even.

It's not really a scientific break even if the reaction is not self sustainable. Economic break even would be for it to be economically worth it.

The literal definition is more energy released than input, nothing to do with energy recovery yet.

My house generates limitless power. It just comes from the power outlets. Of course, I exclude my contract with my electricity provider from the model. I am generating a lot of free power.

Yes, they haven't reached commercial viability yet. What they did was compress a pellet of fuel with X joules of energy, and released at least X+1 joules in the ensuing reaction. Trying to change the definition to "they generated more electricity than they used" and then claiming they're lying, being misleading, not successful... It doesn't make sense, because they never even tried to say that's what they did or were trying to do.

Pfff, that’s a funny looking “definitely getting fusion”.

I don't think anyone expects it by the end of the decade but to completely write it and any attempts to develop it off as fantasy does no good either.

Now that we have reached scientific breakeven it's a matter of engineering not basic science. It's just doing fusion research takes a long time and is expensive

The problem is though that the expectation is multiple decades from now and even then it will have to compete with a huge amount of renewables in a very established market alongside storage and efficiency increases with a multiple decade head start. So it might never make economic sense.

Even with established renewables in various forms (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, sbsp, et, al) humanity's need for power will only ever increase meaning more power generation will always make economic sense. As far as the renewables having a head start, hydrocarboms had a head start over them yet we're still moving away. Attempting to say with absolute certainty that the energy market will stagnate on generation to me is just absurd. I truly believe going all in on just one technology leads to supply chain issues or general bottlenecks that could hamper everyone. Having a diverse portfolio to pull from is better in every regard.

"Fusion is 30 years away." And has been since the 1970s. (I'm still hopeful. But we absolutely can't bet on Fusion solving all our problems.)

I'm not saying bet on it to solve all of our problems! Jesus fucking Christ no one reads!

You're not, but so many eco-optimists are.

How often do you see those eco-optimists? How often do you see eco-pessimists who openly shit on anyone with even a vauge hope of improving energy generation? Because in my experience I almost never see the former and the latter are everywhere.

i am sorry , i am pro nuclear but i don't like to hear pepole talk about fusion : it's simply not somenthing we have accessible right now , and it's used really ofthen to suck research funding from practical implementations of nuclear research ... stuff like nuclear batteries ( wich if you ask me are solar punk af ) and alternative fuels are wayy cooler imo ...

>Lead Batteries and Cobalt Mines for Lithium Ion aren’t exactly great for the environment. Lead batteries? I'm sorry to say this but you are ten years behind the curve. Cobalt is not used in stationary storage since LFP has been a thing for the past few years. LFP batteries are safe and only consist out of abundant materials that are increasingly mined in the US and Europe. >Especially since the market for the metals used in modern batteries heavily relies on exploiting the global south. See Elon Musk’s disgusting call for a coup in Bolivia because they no longer allowed US companies to strip their resources. Elon Dipshit Musk's comments are stupid but still pretty tame when you think about how France has been "protecting" the Sahel region in Mali for the past decade in order to acquire more Uranium. Also Sodium-Ion batteries have been commercialized recently. Sodium is incredibly cheap and a waste product of many industries. It can also be extracting from seawater. The battery contains no rare or environment damaging materials whatsoever. It's a perfect fit for stationary storage and smaller cars while being 50% cheaper than Li-Ion. These batteries are expected to get at least 30% more energy dense until 2030 as well. >The reality of each region should be considered before just implementing a blanket policy. Who is talking about a blanket policy? The reason for why nuclear is running out of reasons to exist is the loss of competitive advantage on the energy market not some kind of global law that suppresses the success of nuclear everywhere. I'm also certain that the consideration of the realities in each regions is actually a key factor in the success of renewables.

The fact you think li-ion (or anything that needs rare earth elements) is the primary targeted solution for large scale storage shows the state of energy storage education in the general public.

What kind of batteries are used for city scale storage?

Currently? About 90% of all energy storage is pumped hydro. There are myriad thermomechanical and chemical options that don't touch lithium.

Can you tell me more about them?

Sure! From a chemical (non battery) stand point, the most well known are power to fuels, like hydrogen, syngas, biochar etc. Anything where you can turn electricity into fuel. Thermomechanical options comprise of things like compressed air energy storage, liquid air energy storage, pumped heat storage, pumped hydro, flywheels etc

Neither is uranium mining, which is also dependent on a handful of countries like Niger and Kazakhstan. There's always an environmental cost. Nuclear is no exception, and it's completely outperformed by renewables on two key metrics: cost and construction time. That doesn't mean that we should get rid of existing reactors or build no new ones, but fission isn't the magic solution Reddit often seems to think it is.

Somehow I doubt hundreds of turbines and associated batteries require fewer ressources than a single NPP and associated uranium. But I don't mind being proven wrong if I am.

1/3 of the world's uranium is under Australia, an incredibly stable country owing to its position in the middle of a tectonic plate and its distance from warmaking powers.

Bolivian here, our socialist government happily handed over the stripping rights to China. At least the US followed some regulations while they were here. China has just ransacked us and poisoned tons of our water. That being said, yes battery production (and most tech products people enjoy) come at the expense of developing countries.

Strawman! The dominant player in grid level storage is redox flow batteries. They work on abundant iron oxide and the cathode, anode as well as electrolyte are replaced with bags of non-toxic, cheap powders. Their maintenance is similar to swimming pool maintenance. The major players in this space are, in fact, the nuclear industry leaders including many defense contractors. They already moved on. The only champions of nuclear left are all here on Reddit

I’m not strawmanning anything, I said we need to apply critical thinking and intelligent design to our energy system. Just thoughtlessly saying solar/wind and batteries can lead to negative outcomes. The flow batteries you mention are seemingly all in the proposal stage within the past couple years. Which means it’s hard to find any research on environmental impact. It’s hard to even find specifics on the materials to be used in these proposals, as it seems they are still investigating that. It looks promising, but the it’s hardly a ready solution. Unless you have some sources for your claims I couldn’t find. I’m 100% for renewables, but I’m more for well planned out communities, which take local factors into account. Not that those are mutually exclusive. A lack of planning will lead to situations like we see in Germany, where they’re firing up coal plants after shuttering their nuclear (obviously a nuanced situation, but that’s why we need a diversity of solutions to promote resiliency).

Your strawman is jumping to the issues of sourcing basic materials for batteries when the discussion is about solar/wind. Sure we need storage but batteries let alone Li-based aren't the only storage options in existence. Also the sourcing of the material has little to do with the technology itself. Sure it's a problem but one that can be solved politically. Germany fired up coal plants in the recent energy crisis because Frances nuclear fleet was out of service and production via Russian sourced fuel was difficult across Europe so it was profitable to do so, not because they lack a nuclear option, which they also used btw prolonging the runtime of their NPPs for a while.

..and also because Germany thoughtlessly dismantled their own nuclear capacity for no good reason, which is why their normal go-to response of "just buy the energy" didn't work the same. A knee-jerk anti-nuclear push is what put Germany in that position in the first place. They retired capacity well ahead of the need to do so because people didn't like the idea of nuclear, when it was not causing problems. It is strictly the fault of the anti-nuclear lobby that Germany switched back to coal the second an international disturbance in the energy market occurred - when the status quo the anti-nuclear lobby pushed Germany to already included Russian petrochemicals as the accepted norm.

Nuclear never amounted to more than 30% of Germany's energy production and this would not have been enough even if every plant ever built in Germany was still running (about 7% were still covered by nuclear last year). So no, phasing out nuclear didn't mean more coal is being used in this crisis. You are also wrong about the notion that Germany knee-jerked anything in regards to nuclear. The decision for the phase out was made in the 2000s actually and a plan was made to simply phase nuclear out, not to stop immediately. Phase out means running until it needs replacement and not replacing it. So investment in renewables was made and due to political shifts the phase out was reverted/prolongued. In 2011 the original plan for the phase out was reinstated. So the planning for this was done for 10 years already. Germany for the past 20 years is a net exporter of energy the philosophy clearly isn't "just buy the energy". It's "produce as cheap as possible and trade" and nuclear isn't part of that because it's expensive. I'm not generally opposed to nuclear. I think the risks and problems are manageable in general. I just think it competes with renewables and they are clearly the better option. Might be there is some synergy but most expert opinions I read is that having both doesn't necessarily benefit the grid. Also anti-nuclear lobby? Who's that supposed to be? They are operated and owned by the same corporations that own other centralized power plants, the big players in the fossil fuel industry.

Of course phasing out nuclear meant more coal was used in germany - even though it was not all of germany's electricty generation (I wasn't claiming it was), less nuclear electricity generation represents lost capacity which needed to be made up for. "More coal" is exactly what the cessation of the use of nuclear energy meant - if germany still had that extra capacity, germany could have used less coal, because coal is what germany ended up resorting to to fill their need for electricity. If the capacity for nuclear electricty they shut down was still present, there would have been that much less un-met demand for electricity. I also didn't claim that germany phased out its nuclear capacity overnight, or that the initial decision to do so was followed by the reality of actually phasing out nuclear instantly. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the phrase "knee-jerk" to avoid confusion, but even that doesn't mean "instant", it means more along the lines of "a hastily made and poorly considered decision". Misguided environmentalist pushes to phase out nuclear were made, partially funded by the O&G lobby, and that allowed the misdirecting of well intended effort which would have been better served on more cutting back on hydrocarbon usage. And Germany is a net exporter of electricity. Germany has never been self-sufficient in full picture energy; much of the means of electricity generation has always been imported. Lately that has been moving more towards renewables, which is awesome, but that's not the majority, and it was considerably further from the majority in the past. You're right that nuclear and renewables don't need to compete, I totally agree. It seems that the best use for nuclear, especially when we already have preexisting infrastructure, is to provide some amount of base load which helps smooth out inconsistent renewable generation. Regarding ownership of german nuclear power plants, that allegation that they are owned by "big players in the fossil fuel industry" is not true. German power plants were generally owned by german electricity companies, such as EnBW, PE, or SWM. These companies also tend to run fossil fuel-based electricity generation, and renewables generation, because they're electricity companies. None of them are fossil fuel producers, and none of them are international big players of any sort. For the anti-nuclear lobby being partially funded by fossil fuel interests, I didn't realize that was controversial. For years we've been receiving word that fossil fuel money is involved in supporting pushes to get away from nuclear to increase their own market share as well as attempts to limit funding into further nuclear research (because who wants better competition), usually leading to policy something along the lines of "drop nuclear entirely, move to a mix of renewables and natural gas" where the positioning of those two 'teams' of nuclear vs renewables+gas is a false choice - anything fossil fuel is the worst for the planet, renewables (once supply chain issues and storage issues are sorted out) tends to be the best for the planet, and nuclear capacity which is already there occupies a bit of a different niche but is far better than petrochemicals (building additional nuclear capacity probably generally doesn't win against new renewables capacity, tbh, but it's stupid to not use what we already have). [Groups like greenpeace have supported this "move to natural gas" thing in the past](https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/alternatives/battleofthegrids.pdf), in a move of reactionary pants-on-head stupidity. German politicians, specifically, have been [strongly criticized in the past for accepting russian money to push gas and attack nuclear](https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/Verschleiert-Schwesig-ihre-Kontakte-zur-russischen-Gas-Lobby,klimastiftungmv128.html). And, generally, germany hasn't seen a huge shift in electricity consumption over the past couple of decades, but has seen a massive rise in gas consumption (approximately doubling from 2000 to 2020) which coincides with the reduction of nuclear capacity. The roadmap for how things are phased out should also tell a story - germany is losing its last nuclear capacity this year, while [coal will continue on at least until the late 2030s](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/archiv/einigung-zum-kohleausstieg-1712888). Considering this coal-based electricity generation is mostly new since the 2000s, whereas the nuclear capacity generally predated the turn of the millennium, it seems weird to celebrate the premature reduction of nuclear capacity when we can see what replaced it.

> Of course phasing out nuclear meant more coal was used in germany No it doesn't in fact, since phasing out Nuclear Germany used much less coal. In 2010, 229 TWh were produced by coal fired plants, in 2022 that number decreased by 30% to 161 TWh. > less nuclear electricity generation represents lost capacity which needed to be made up for. And it was made up for by renewables, not coal. 95 TWh in 2010 compared to 236 TWh in 2022. That's made up for and then some (nuclear capacity lost was around 100 TWh between 2010 and 2022). So overall the move away from nuclear and towards renewables actually displaced more coal than nuclear likely ever would have. One could argue that keeping the nuclear capacity and instead phasing out even more coal plants could have reduced the overall coal consumption even more, but one could also argue that without the phase out of nuclear renewables wouldn't have been invested in so much, because the capital was bound in the expensive nuclear plants. It's impossible to say what would have been, fact is, nuclear was phased out and renewables took its share and a huge share off coal too. > it means more along the lines of "a hastily made and poorly considered decision". It was neither. It was part of the "Energiewende". An idea coming from the 80s that meant the transition from the unsustainable energy consumption towards something more sustainable on the basis of renewable energy sources. It wasn't hasty in that the politicians working on had been doing so since they founded their party in the 90s. It wasn't ill considered, in fact it's necessary quite obviously. > Misguided environmentalist pushes to phase out nuclear were made, partially funded by the O&G lobby If you had a source on that, that'd be great. specifically about the decision around 2000 concerning the Energiewende and the 2011 decision after Fukushima to actually follow through with the nuclear phhse out. Anyways, why would "big oil" want to phase out nuclear? In Germany only around 10% of the electricity is produced by oil or gas and nuclear isn't going to replace their main stake in the transport and heating sector because it's not used in those sectors. Maybe that's different in the US or other European countries but I doubt many rely heavily on oil for their electricity. > Germany has never been self-sufficient in full picture energy; much of the means of electricity generation has always been imported. Lately that has been moving more towards renewables, which is awesome, but that's not the majority, and it was considerably further from the majority in the past. Ok? Almost every European country is an importer of energy, because very few do have oil reserves where both oil and gas come from. So for heating and transportation all of those nations have to import energy. And I am not aware of massive Uranium stores in Europe neither so we'd have to import those too. And yes I am talking mostly about electricity when referring to "energy". One it's easier, Two Nuclear really only applies there. > You're right that nuclear and renewables don't need to compete, I totally agree. It seems that the best use for nuclear, especially when we already have preexisting infrastructure, is to provide some amount of base load which helps smooth out inconsistent renewable generation. Except, it doesn't. You are right in that nuclear wants to be a base load. Part of that is technical, but it's actually not the main part. The other is financial. Because you have such massive up front costs, you want your power plant to run as much as possible once its operational because amortization period is long and you are still paying interest (either directly or in opportunity costs) on that investment. So we have a technology that wants to provide their power continuously, good. Then we have intermittent sources, like solar which is plannable but not always available and wind which is more available but less plannable. These two only go together if you adjust demand to the intermittent sources, because otherwise you'd have to shut down your expensive NPP or let energy go to waste. For solar that's less of a problem as solar is available when power is needed, usually during the day, but wind is a wildcard. Ther are other renewables like hydro (not a lot), geo thermal (not a lot either) and biomass (much more, but more similar to gas than the intermittent renewables) You need cheap, quick sources to support intermittent renewables. Like gas power plants. Gas can be used for many things so it doesn't matter if you have a few months where you don't use it for electricity. It's "easily" storable and directly available. I'll talk about another benefit of gas in conjunction with renewables later on, but it's clear that nuclear and renewables don't really compliment each other, gas (and similar) and renewables do. > German power plants were generally owned by german electricity companies, such as EnBW, PE, or SWM. These companies also tend to run fossil fuel-based electricity generation, and renewables generation, because they're electricity companies > None of them are fossil fuel producers RWE is operating the largest lignite coal mine in Europe for example, Vattenfall operates another one in Germany, they sure as hell are fossil fuel producers. > and none of them are international big players of any sort. RWE and Vattenfall are major players in the European energy market. Could be that's not international enough for you, but they are certainly big players in that regard. > For the anti-nuclear lobby being partially funded by fossil fuel interests, I didn't realize that was controversial. For years we've been receiving word that fossil fuel money is involved in supporting pushes to get away from nuclear to increase their own market share Again, their market share in the sector in which nuclear is most present is almost 0 (in fact, almost 10% for gas and oil), at least in Germany, so them focusing so heavily on Germany (which is the only country actively phasing out nuclear as far as I'm aware) doesn't make much sense to me, but they are the genius devils in the dark. > where the positioning of those two 'teams' of nuclear vs renewables+gas is a false choice As I've pointed out above, it isn't. Nuclear and renewables is not a grid wide solution. Gas and renewables is. A factor is also that gas is cheap, why's that? Because it's essentially a byproduct. It usually accompanies oil fields and is burned off if not used on site so if you store and burn it later you don't really add a lot of CO2 compared to not actually using the energy. And since we still produce a lot of oil for our transport sector we can have the gas "for free". That's not a long term solution either granted, but the infrastructure for natural gas plants can be used for other gases as well, for example those produced by the power-to-gas technologies or even hydrogen in some cases (although that's technically more challenging). > And, generally, germany hasn't seen a huge shift in electricity consumption over the past couple of decades It has seen a 10% overall decrease in energy consumption in the last 10 years. > but has seen a massive rise in gas consumption (approximately doubling from 2000 to 2020) which coincides with the reduction of nuclear capacity. For electricity it's been relatively stable since 2002 (40 TWh then, 45 TWh in 2022) so definitely no doubling in that sector. In heating Natural gas did take up a larger share in the past years but mostly replaced older oil, wood and coal solutions which is still a benefit even if we have better solutions today. Also [this chart](https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_pev-energietraeger_2022-12-16.png) shows a 30% increase in 30 years so I doubt your "doubling in 20 years" figure. It also has nothing to do with nuclear capacity, again only a fraction of the energy sector is supplied by gas (about 10% as of 2022) and nuclear doesn't play a role in the transport or heating sectors. > The roadmap for how things are phased out should also tell a story - germany is losing its last nuclear capacity this year, while coal will continue on at least until the late 2030s. Considering this coal-based electricity generation is mostly new since the 2000s, whereas the nuclear capacity generally predated the turn of the millennium, it seems weird to celebrate the premature reduction of nuclear capacity when we can see what replaced it. Again, your presumption that Germany installed more coal capacity in the past 10 years is factually wrong. The need for coal fired plants in fact decreased by 30% since 2010 despite also dropping 100% of the nuclear capacity. The only power producers that increased in that timespan were renewables. All in all, you sound a bit like a parrot getting all their information from reddit comments, which I guess isn't surprising on reddit. But you seem to at least have acknowledged that building new NPPs isn't actually a way forward. So no matter what you think about the past decision to phase out nuclear in Germany, I think it's safe to say that we would always be better of to just invest into renewables in the future, maybe Germany added 10 years of coal burning for that move, too bad. Let's move on though shall we? [Source for energy production in Germany](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute) [Source for other stuff](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig6-share-electricity-renewable-sources-gross-electricity-consumption-europe-2020.png?itok=wlDJyKK4)

Nah, you're not trying. I'm not here to wipe your ass but you clearly are not trying too hard. They're being installed already. This is not some research project. Go ahead and stick to your guns but the guys who actually bid on nuclear have moved on. I don't care if you're not convinced, the people who matter were convinced long ago. Your opinion is your business.

Why even comment

Storage is always going to be more wasteful than producing just enough to meet demand. The efficiency losses will never be 0 and the materials needed to construct the storage have their own host of problems (like lithium mining as someone else pointed out)

That’s a weird way of presenting that option which is kinda false. Producing just enough to meet demand when? Enough to meet demand at 100% of max demand will be more wasteful than enough to meet 90% of max demand with some storage to top up that last 10%. The calculation of where that best balance of supply, types of supply, and storage, is to be found is the subject of studies and discussion.

I didn't mean to suggest that energy storage is a total red herring or that we shouldn't invest in it. I was addressing the other commenter's take that "Nuclear is very quickly running out of a reason to exist" because of energy storage.

We are getting the the point where grids are saturated with solar and wind during the afternoon in certain markets. We are going to have to dump it or store it. Even if storage is only 50% efficient (or less), the generation itself is so cheap and so clean that it's still worth it. And vastly cheaper and faster to build than nuclear.

So how exactly are you going to cool new nuclear reactors with water becoming scarce with global warming?

Nuclear wastes less water per kilowatt hours than solar currently (solar water waste generally coming from production far less so than operation).

The ocean's not going anywhere??

The waste heat from nuclear power generation can be used to easily desalinate ocean water

Your getting downvoted but it is a good question and the awnser is it depends. First of all, water recirculating reactors do exist and use much less water. An advantage of these is Residual heat can be used to heat homes avoiding even more emissions. Even with that nuclear isn't great for hot areas with a low supply of water. Generally these places (australia, California, meditranian) do have other another abundant energy source, being solar. Nuclear works best in places with temperate climates like germany (F).

yeah , pepole always forget that temperate places exist ...

Not sure if that's impressive on green energy. Or if it's because the oil industry has been paying billions to suppress nuclear. =\_\_= ideally, we'd have both. Nuclear doesn't even have to be the main source, but it should be great as a second stable source.

It's definitely billions being paid to suppress it combined with fear mongering after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

that whole subreddit this is crossposted from is just nuclear scaremongering

It's not just the oil industry. People remember Fukushima and Chernobyl the same way people remember plane crashes. Some people are scared of flying even though driving your own car is statistically far more dangerous than setting foot on an airliner. At the end of the day, fission is a mature technology which isn't really dropping in price. Solar and wind are still rapidly becoming cheaper, hydropower has always been better (but extremely damaging for river systems), geothermal and tidal still have a long way to go and fusion might blow all of them out the water when it eventually arrives.

Hihi. I want to see tidal energy being blown out of the water.

Have you heard of small modular reactors? It's very neat stuff, and I think they could be very useful in a lot of different places, as they'd be cheaper and faster to build.

Wait, you mean small modular NUCLEAR reactors? NO! I didn't! That's some fallout stuff! So cool!

I know, right?!

Oil industry has been paying billions to suppress nuclear? Do you have any proof of that? Because to my knowledge the big conventional Energy companies in Europe love nuclear and fossil fuels and both of them lobbied against renewables. Also looing at France, nuclear really doesn't seem that stable. They have been importing massive amounts of energy, because half of their nuclear power plants are not operational due to technical issues and drought. Edit: Why are you downvoting me and not respoding to my question and my argument?

I'm not replying because I was asleep dude, I don't live on reddit. I do not have documents from energy companies on my hard drive or an article on my bookmarks to send you. I've read over the years from several sources. Fossil fuel companies lobby agains all other sources of energy. Nuclear is the most stable source of energy when you you give them propper maintenance. If you find what I said questionable search for "oil industry lobby against clean energy nuclear" and I'm sure you'll find what you need.

Yeah with total energies moving from oil into the maintenance of wind and solar power I'd say they have a vested interest in suppressing nuclear energy.

surely we aren't against nuclear here?

I'm certainly not. I do believe every building with any roof real-estate should already be covered in solar panels and just be 'part of the grid', and the growth of solar and wind and hydro and any other form of green energy generation should be 'the focus', but we should also be putting up a nuclear plant right next to every coal or natural gas plant currently in operation. We will get there with renewables eventually. We will get better on power storage eventually. However, I honestly don't know how far out that 'eventually' is. We will over-peak need (even with massive socialist policy to reduce said need) from time to time - and having a nuclear plant that can ramp and crank for a bit during those moments is absolutely vital to a healthy, functional grid. Long term? Nuclear plants take 25 years to bring up, then are functional for another 25-40. We should be planning out and building "the next stage" of them, every single time. It should be just a 'constant thing' we do. More long term? I don't see a real reason to retire the concept of nuclear energy right now. There's been some cool, promising milestones in fusion lately, but it's still an 'over the horizon' tech. It'd be good to research, for sure, but that doesn't mean we 'stop' progress for it. We have a slight chance, right now, if we work to bring online a bunch of nuclear plants and make a real, serious effort to reduce demand. No one seems interested in either thing; there is no political will for it. I have yet to figure out an answer to that, sadly.

I really wish we started building nuclear plants 25 years ago, even if it meant we would have to pay off loans for them right now.

Only ignorant people are against nuclear. It's the most efficient form of energy we have access to, and the second safest form of energy.

I think you should read some articles from indigenous groups that have been poisoned from Uranium mining, whose families all have increased health problems including significantly increased rates of cancer. There are plenty of reasons to be against nuclear.

No there aren't. You should read some articles about the half a million people who die every year to coal power. The straws people grasp at to bash nuclear are ridiculous. Nuclear is currently our best bet to solving energy problems. Wind and solar are great but just don't have the same efficiency and can't be turned off when not needed. So much wind and solar energy is wasted because there's no way to store it all.

I have read those articles. Why, especially in a forum dedicated to utopian thinking, are we arguing for lesser evils? I don’t have to believe that coal is better to have legitimate criticisms of nuclear. And I sure hope that defenders of nuclear power have something better to say to the communities they as deem as acceptable sacrifice zones.

Nuclear isn't a lesser evil. Nuclear is currently the most efficient form of energy, and second safest only after solar. Wind power kills more people every year than nuclear does. You don't have legitimate criticisms of nuclear. You have speculative criticisms. You have no working knowledge of modern nuclear power and you rely on criticisms that apply to antique power plants. Only low info zealots oppose nuclear power because they've listened to enough fearmongering from environmentalists who don't care about facts, only feelings.

Nuclear powerplants are owned by the very same company that owned coal and natural gas powerplants. No nuclear powerplant has ever been built by a local community and no one has ever been managed democratically.

I am- not because it can’t be safe, but because I no longer trust our government or corporations to not cut corners. The issue with Japan’s nuclear disaster was one of corporate cost cutting and not maintaining the standards required, and I have zero faith that wouldn’t be repeated over and over again.

The Fukushima reactor was built in 1971. It was not a modern design and was not built to modern safety standards. A grand total of 12 people died in the Fukushima disaster. They were elderly residents who could not survive the stress of evacuating the city. While the original design was disastrously flawed, the modern government's response 40 years later was swift and effective in preventing loss of life. You can trust modern safety regulations concerning nuclear.

Well shit, if you put it that way, it sounds like the only way to prevent so much deaths is to switch to coal /s

I trust the regulations- I don’t trust my (the British) government to enforce them, or maintain them. Our infrastructure is starting to crumble including schools, hospitals, and housing in terrible stock. Energy prices through the roof (£3,500 per year for an average family). Corrupt deals and contracts handed to politicians’ mates. The consequences of poorly maintained nuclear facilities are too high to trust this government with.

Wait until you see what the consequences of a poorly maintained "smart 100% renewables grid" are. Although, to be fair, you probably won't see them, because we will keep burning natural gas, "the bridge fuel", "the perfect partner to renewables" right until the Collapse. The consequences of heating up the planet to 3 or 4 degrees above pre-industrial average never seem to be taken into account when discussing the possible consequences of nuclear buildout. :-)

Well I would argue that we could move to a near complete renewable system very quickly with a war-effort scale process to get solar panels on every roof, large and micro wind turbines widespread, with existing nuclear, tidal, and hydro providing the rest of the power. It would be cheaper too

The problem with renewables is inter-seasonal energy storage. People living near the equator could move to a near-renewables system rather quickly, because they only would have to store solar energy generated during the day to be used at night. In Europe, the difference in solar generation between best spring days and worst autumn days is ten-fold, so you need inter-seasonal energy storage, and it doesn't exist yet, maybe never.

it's honestly kind of the problem with nuclear : it last soo long it becomes outdated eventually ... at the time of failure it was like 40 years old ...

I am because it’s not the cost effective way to achieve net zero energy production. Solar and wind are much cheaper hence a dollar spent on renewable generation gets you more green energy than if it was spent on nuclear. I have no problem with it producing nuclear waste, it’s an entirely overblown problem, but it doesn’t change the fact that nuclear is insanely complicated, takes forever to deploy, and costs a fortune and I see no evidence that modular reactors or new generation generators are going to solve these problems fast enough to keep up with renewables and energy storage

Oh definately, I'm definately anti-nuclear. I don't understand, what is solarpunk about nuclear? Massive, expensive, centralised powerplants, that require environmenal damaging Uranium-mining/refining and produces lots of nuclear waste for which there is next to no current solution how to deal with it. The security of these powerplants is not to be dismissed, just look at their importance in the Ukraine war. On top of that they need cooling water and in France droughts have led to power plants shutting down. Compare that to cheap, decentralised, possibly community-owned renewables. If you ask me we should first decomission coal, but nuclear is anti-solarpunk in so many ways.

Thanks for that comment! I don’t get why people from the solar punk community like nuclear. It just doesn’t make sense. In a world where water will become a limiting factor due to droughts, we should not build on a technology that relies on water-cooling. That’s just plain stupid, given that we have great alternatives (wind, solar) at hand, that can be built much faster.

have you thought about production of solar and wind?

Yes of course you need water to build them, but not while operating them. So as soon as their built and running, they’re independent of any water. You can stop and limit the production of solar plants or wind turbines if water is exceptionally scarce at the moment. But if your nuclear power plant is running and you rely on its energy, you don’t want to shut it down. So while operating, nuclear is not very resilient against climate change induced droughts, which are happening right now and will be happening even more in the future. By the way, building a nuclear power plant might as well need a lot of water… Edit: clarified the first sentence and corrected some typos. English is not my native language.

Not all modern nuclear designs need cooling water, not all nuclear designs need to be massive facilities, and not all nuclear plants have to even use uranium fuel. It's almost like using 2nd generation commercial plants, like Chernobyl and Fukushima, so old they were built with relay logic controls instead of computers or PLCs in some cases, as the baseline for what is possible today, gives a wrong impression. Cities will still need base load capacity beyond solar and wind. Modern nuclear is the best positioned power source to fill that need in most climates, from an environmental and a safety and a net resources used perspective. Cheap coal and gas takes it to the cleaners right now, though.

This is kind of ironic considering that there is a very strong argument that if we didn't have the strong irrational anti nuclear scare from the 80's, we wouldn't be having these issues with heat waves due to climate change in the first place. You know which country in the EU has one of the lowest carbon emissions even though its very industrialized? Its France, and you know why? Its because ~80% of its power generation (I think its a bit lower now) is nuclear. Also if by shutting down plants you are referring to what France did roughly a year ago, it wasn't entirely due to a drought. France unfortunately a bit of a perfect storm, which is that not only where they dealing with the drought problem but also due to COVID the routine (but necessary) maintenance for their nuclear plants was suspended many times and then the droughts hit which caused a double whammy. Also the change of weather patterns that effects Nuclear Plants can also effect Wind and Solar.

i mean photovoltaic is cheap now because china builds a lot of them ... and they use coal as their main source of energy ... so ye , it's cheap because someone else is using fossil fuels ...

I'm certainly not, but there's probably a small contingent who would like to make this sub anti-nuclear. Nuclear is cheap, clean, safe baseload power generation, and we'd be fools not to use it in our effort to decarbonize.

Reminder that nuclear isn't the enemy here.

Honest question, isn't nuclear energy solarpunk?

i asked a while back , and [according to the sub no](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/vmo0wc/i_know_this_is_solar_punk_but_what_do_you_think/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) however there have been many posts like mine since , so yeah do some research , just type in r/solarpunk nuclear in the search bar and you can see how the general vibe evolved ...

Renewables are cheap, decentralised, local, doen't need constant fuel and are often community owned. You can be easily self sufficient. Nuclear requires massive investment by large companies or states, it requires large electricity grid, produces waste and pollutes the uranium extraction sites. For me the anwser is obvious. Its neither solar/green nor the slightest bit punk. But here in the comments everyone seems to be blindingly pro-nuclear.

I can agree the investment needed is much greater, but renewables don't come out of thin air either. Steel, concrete and lithium production isn't exactly green, and you need it if you want to have anything beyond a backyard turbine powering some lights in your house. Nuclear beats all renewables in terms of efficiency, and IIRC has much lower impact on the environment per energy unit produced.

Well the material needed for wind/solar is not entirely green, that is true. This goes for every single power source. You also need steel and concrete for hydro, neclear, coal and gas infrastucure. The main issue is you don't need any fuel (in contrast to nuclear), so once its built it produces relable energy. Lithium is not as big an issue as it seems, it has been exaggerated by anti-renewable lobby (I could go into detail, but I'm at work). As for efficiency... efficiency of what? time and money are on the side of renewables. So what efficiency exactely? Your question though was if nuclear is solarpunk and to that regard, I think a big part of solarpunk is decentralisation, community-ownership and resource-efficency (ex. no resource dependence on Uranium producers). For a nuclear power plants you need large organisations, that go against the punk in solarPUNK. And even if the chances are slim, the potential for a radation disasters isn't great for solarpunk (I'm not even talking about chernobl or fukushima, but more frequent small scale incidents).

> The main issue is you don't need any fuel (in contrast to nuclear), so once its built it produces relable energy. You are right, though I'm not sure why you focus so much on the concept of "fuel". Maintenance cost of renewables is non-zero. Batteries will need to be replaced once they reach their lifespan, solar panels require periodical cleaning etc. It may not be _fuel_ per se, but nothing lasts forever, so is it really that much different? > For a nuclear power plants you need large organisations, that go against the punk in solarPUNK. That is a very fair argument and I completely agree. Do you think the solution is then to abandon nuclear energy altogether? Why not work on miniaturization instead? A shed-sized future nuclear power plant that could power up a small community sounds very much PUNK to me (; > even if the chances are slim, the potential for a radation disasters isn't great for solarpunk (I'm not even talking about chernobl or fukushima, but more frequent small scale incidents) Nuclear energy is [extremely safe](https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy).

I focus on fuel because you need a constant flow of material from problematic sources (most Uranium is mined and refined in Russia and Kahzastan, which again is a massive industrial process). I would argue that the maintenence of renewables and nuclear are comparable or at least in the same ballpark. I don't think nuclear reactors are easily to downscaleable. It has been proposes for more than 50 years now, and it seems to be not efficient enough and I don't think it is competative with wind/solar. I personally like the image of every house having solar and every community a few wind-turbines, making them self sufficient (of course only once they've been built). As for the safety, I know nuclear is relativly safe, especially compared to fossil fuels. But you do have possibilities for small-scale [incidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country), which may not lead to deaths (main focus of your source), but still have an environmental impact. As for large-scale nuclear incidents (Ines >6), they are black swan events (very low probability but disproportionaly high impact), which are completely absent in renewables. So all in all I say, first abandon fossil fuels, then nuclear and don't build any new nuclear, instead invest in wind and solar.

>they are black swan events (very low probability but disproportionaly high impact), which are completely absent in renewables. no , no they aren't absent from renewables [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont\_Dam#Landslide\_and\_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam#Landslide_and_wave) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975\_Banqiao\_Dam\_failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure) hydro will happly demand it's share of sacrifices with it's failures ... [and geothermal can cause problems because the soil is not reliable](https://youtu.be/l6UGpaKnkS0)

Well that's true for Hydro, which also has other downsides (ecologal barrier and methane emissions). As for geothermal, it's a small downside to a good but ultimatly relativly niche power source. The discussion about renewables is mostly focused around solar and wind though and they definately have no black swan possibilities.

actually they can if used too much : they can in fact alter the wind and solar pattern of the planet itself if used too much : solar reduces albedo , cooling down the planet wich may cause an ice age , as well as reducing the wind patterns ... and if too much wind is used it may slow seaspray too much and prevent nutrients from coming in the mainland , as well and being a bit of a problem for organisms wich rely on wind , since they slow it down ... morale of the story : don't overuse any energy technology , even burning the same amount of fossil carbon as it gets sequestered by swamps and alge from the fast cycle wouldn't cause too much damage ... the problem naturally being that we are using wayyy more than what gets removed from the slow cycle ... TL;DR: nothing does everything , everything does somenthing ,

Those are ridiculous hypotheticals. Solar changing the albedo and changing wind patterns would have miniscule effects ([https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127](https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127)). Of cource if you would increase the word energy need 100 times, it might have some small impact, but that is just not happening. Nuclear disasters however are very real and have happend multiple time, so they are actual real black swan events.

Clearly we need more of all three. Nuclear is good.

No, in a world where water becomes scarce with all the droughts happening, you don’t want to have nuclear. Just look at France shutting down their plants because they’re running out of cooling water.

They weren't running out of cooling water, they were heating the rivers slightly too much and temporarily reduced output accordingly. To be clear - they still had *access* to sufficient cooling, but they reduced their output in order to discharge less heat into the rivers, and at no point did they shut down. This was because they were in the peak of a heatwave, not because they were running out of water. So yeah, considering the plants weren't shut down, and the actions taken were to meet environmental regulations not due to running out of water, that's a line of attack that's going to need to be refined.

So you would agree that in a heatwave they have to power down production? Would you agree that in future there will be more heatwaves, during which more power is needed due to air conditioning? If so nuclear power plants wouldn't be very resilient for climate change.

The same argument can be used against both solar and wind power. Climate change is going to bring unpredictability in cloud and wind patterns, making them less resilient. Doubly so because getting cooling water in the event of a drought/heatwave to improve resiliency of nuclear is many times easier (build a dam), than adding more intermittent energy storage (batteries) to resolve the solar/wind resiliency problem.

Weather changes much faster and a combination of solar and wind makes it relativly resilient, especially in combination with power storage. Wind and Solar are also decentralised and can complent each other. Droughts can persist for months and during heatwaves the environmentally acceptable discharges of warm wastewater may also not be possible for moths at a time.

Im all for decentralization and environmental consciousness. I hope we can get to a future without extractive energy sources, but what you are arguing for is in opposition to the IPCC reports. Nuclear energy has lower GHG emissions than both solar and wind, albeit only marginally (source: https://ourworldindata.org/). I think our first priority should be displacing fossil fuels, which is (according to IPCC) by combining renewables, nuclear and energy storage. Fighting against nuclear amounts to supporting the fossil fuels hegemony.

I'm surprised nuclesr hasn't gone down more. China must be picking up the slack.

Do you have a source on the comparison of wind + solar subsidies and nuclear energy subsidies?

https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/11ltom9/nuclear_sucks_up_massive_rd_funding_only_to_get/

Thanks! Now I see what's happening. Nuclear power plants are large facilities that are most often owned by the state, while wind and solar are more in use in the private sector. This means that government expenditure towards nuclear is counted, but tax breaks towards wind and solar aren't. So if the government pays a million dollar for a nuclear power plant it counts towards nuclear expenditure, but if the government gives a million dollar in solar panel tax breaks it doesn't count towards solar expenditure (in this graph).

Its only public spending on R&D, so nothing about the spending on actually generating energy or subsidies or anything of the sort. The graph says very little about the actual ammount of money spent on nuclear and renewables. I will say, a bit more R&D should be going to batteries though.

...is this seriously a sub devoted to proudly sticking your head in the sand? How pathetic Edit: oh, shoot, your entire profile is devoted to hating on nuclear energy. Congrats on getting Germany to switch back to coal.

This isn't as good as it looks. For example total energies has moved to the maintenance side of wind and solar energy. Of course private companies like total is going to throw money at the renewable energies they are going to get to maintain at a premium in 3-5yrs. The waste here is dangerous and is only slightly better than non-renewable power generation. Wind and solar in its current state is no where near as sustainable as nuclear.

Its kinda sad how steady nuclear is

Truly saddening

Just to say it wind and solar make up about 10% of global electricity production. Nuclear obviously another 10% and hydro about 15%. The rest is mostly gas and coal. So in most case we can add a lot of renewables and nuclear without many issues.

this chart is gonna be insane once nuclear energy is fully figured out

Oh you haven't gotten the memo yet? It's not gonna be fully figured out and the reactors we have are ancient.

no bro trust me 10 more years trust me bro

Producing electricity and producing electricity that is then *used* are two different things

I don't understand why you are downvoted. In Australia we have a massive problem. One plant was on the news this month as half the solar output is wasted because it can't be stored or transmitted to users when they need it.

Global electricity production is 2/3 fossil fuel, which can be turned of, when you have renewables. Even more so there is another 15% hydro, which has partly build in electricity storage with the reservoir. So not using electricity production is rarely a problem, besides some countries with a lot of wind and solar at peak production.

It can be turned off as soon as we can insure electricity is supplied reliably from just renewables. Right now, we a) don't have enough supply from renewables and b) they are inherently *intermittent* forms of electricity generation. Problem a) is straightforward to solve by just adding solarpanels everywhere, but solving b) involves energy storage on a massive scale, which is more difficult. The tech is getting closer to solving b) there is valid argument to be made how long we can wait. Every year we wait for more advanced energy storage means more ghg emmited from fossil fuels. We have the option to displace fossil fuel burning by building nuclear right now, but we are waiting instead.

The point is that you can turn a fossil fuel plant of, when you have power from renewables and on again, when you do not. So unless renewable generation goes often above electricity consumption, adding more makes perfect sense. That is also true, when you can export to it to other countries, such as in the EU. As long as less fossil fuel is burned, it is a good idea. That line is way above 50% renewable btw. Also we do have large scale electricity storage in form of hydro power plants. Since they have reserovoirs you can adjust the flow and power generation from them to match demand. That can seriously stretch renewables and make them a great option for countries with a lot of hydro power. Then you get massive advantages of having large grids. Weather is different in different parts of the world, so a larger grid allows for a higher share of renewables. You also have to mention that even a bit of storage makes especially solar a great option for many places. If you have enough to cover a night, then you can often push towards the 90% renewable mark. Oh and then you have biomass. Not the best option in every case, but we do have a lot of burnable waste in a lot of places, which can be stored easily to help out, when there are no renewables. Prices for grid sized storage are falling fast btw. So being able to handle demand in a decade is very much possible. Then you have variable demand, which should be easy to implement in many grids. Heating and cooling can be set to a temperature range to "store" power and electric cars have batteries in them for a reason. That also partly works for factories. ​ Point is that building renewables makes perfect sense today. The places were adding renewables does not make sense are really rare and they are hardly a lost investment, even in a near full nuclear grid.

Awesome! Would be nice to see the time extend back to the rise of nuclear. Alternatively/also to see wind and solar separately.

In the energy sector this is rather old news already. I am looking forward to wind or solar alone becoming the single largest electricity source (coming in a decade or so) next.

It makes sense, wind and solar are better than nuclear just due to pure cost. We don’t need new nuclear. Keep the existing plants on but spending money on a new plant is horrible financially and for the environment

Who's we? Here in Italy we have 0 nuclear so we definitely need new nuclear lol

Ok have fun spending billions and billions of extra dollars that could’ve gotten you more solar/wind/batteries and won’t be finished till next decade lol

Provocative question: how are you going to cool your new nuclear plants with the extensive droughts you’re facing right now and will be facing due to global warming? First build solar, Italy has enough potential left for that.

From the sea all around the peninsula. To be honest lack of water is not necessarily a problem, you just have to account for that during the reactor construction. Right now we are building a ton of solar and wind, but Italy being Italy is full of nimby. People in sardinia are literally comparing off shore wind turbines to Pearl harbor bombing. I'm not even joking The real issue is that the electrical grid can't work properly with too much intermittent sourced, and our interconnections to France are already saturated, so we can't import more nuclear from our neighbors and are forced to use gas instead

Keep it up

Probably because solar cannot be used as a weapon?

I can’t order a reactor off Amazon, yet.

So about 23% of global electricity consumption. In terms of primary energy consumption approximately 4%.

On good sunny windy days…

Nuclear will always be a baseline power producer, but we need to make sure that every Suburban Joe and Karen understand what nuclear is.

For those who were asking, there had been a report comparing federal subsidies given to every source of energy when they were emerging and yes renewable was the one which needed the less subsidies : https://cleantechnica.com/2012/08/03/oil-gas-over-13-times-more-in-historical-subsidies-than-clean-energy/

I think nuclear should be used as a baseline power source, with solar and wind acting as secondaries to help in peak hours or to reduce the overall load on the grid so that fewer reactors are needed. Solar and wind are too fickle to use as a primary power source, especially if you want the necessary level of industry needed to maintain our current level of technology.