I am really not a friend of nuclear power. But in the current situation a kWh from a reactor will harm or planet less than the same kWh from coal. We have no time to wait forever for windmills to be built in 10 years or so.
At least they won’t stand in the way of the others.
Nuclear is as clean as it gets i really dont understand why people domt support it.
The only true downside is the construction time of 15 years or so.
Location:
There are many ‘local’ groups working on trying to get one in their municipality, but they all seem to ‘forget’ that nuclear needs cooling water, and lots and lots of it.
With the droughts we are already experiencing that water sometimes is simply not there (low river levels or too hot), see [France](https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200825-drought-provokes-shutdown-nuclear-reactors-northeast-france-belgium-ardennes-chooz-meuse).
No cooling water is no production is not paying off the interest on €-billions.
Money, operational:
It’s bloody expensive, Hinkley Point C would get (indexed) about 14 ct/kWh right now, and it needs to run at (yearly) 80% capacity to be profitable at that price.
With wind and solar only asking 5 ct/kWh (and therefore getting priority on the bid-stack), there is a pretty good chance that the nuclear plant won’t even reach 50% capacity (to be compensated with 28 ct/kWh, even more reasons to build more (cheaper) wind/solar).
Waste management:
Lots of handwaving and hot air, verifiable solutions however…
EU should get rid of labeling things as green or not. What matters is stability, predictability and affordability.
9 comments
Locate foot, aim, shoot
Germany is really run by complete morons.
I am really not a friend of nuclear power. But in the current situation a kWh from a reactor will harm or planet less than the same kWh from coal. We have no time to wait forever for windmills to be built in 10 years or so.
At least they won’t stand in the way of the others.
Nuclear is as clean as it gets i really dont understand why people domt support it.
The only true downside is the construction time of 15 years or so.
Reasons why people don’t like nuclear:
Time:
The nuclear industry is pretty conservative and basically only already approved designs would be workable, and even then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
Money, installation:
See the above EPR link.
Location:
There are many ‘local’ groups working on trying to get one in their municipality, but they all seem to ‘forget’ that nuclear needs cooling water, and lots and lots of it.
With the droughts we are already experiencing that water sometimes is simply not there (low river levels or too hot), see [France](https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200825-drought-provokes-shutdown-nuclear-reactors-northeast-france-belgium-ardennes-chooz-meuse).
No cooling water is no production is not paying off the interest on €-billions.
Money, operational:
It’s bloody expensive, Hinkley Point C would get (indexed) about 14 ct/kWh right now, and it needs to run at (yearly) 80% capacity to be profitable at that price.
With wind and solar only asking 5 ct/kWh (and therefore getting priority on the bid-stack), there is a pretty good chance that the nuclear plant won’t even reach 50% capacity (to be compensated with 28 ct/kWh, even more reasons to build more (cheaper) wind/solar).
Waste management:
Lots of handwaving and hot air, verifiable solutions however…
EU should get rid of labeling things as green or not. What matters is stability, predictability and affordability.
Germany: GaS iS GrEeN.