Get those construction contacts signed!
As far as I’m aware, we don’t have any natural deposits of fissonable material in the UK so we’ll bot be truly independent. Green energy is what we need for that, we have plenty of wind, waves and sunlight.
Raw materials are not the choke point for nuclear energy independence- enrichment facilities are, of which the UK has three that produce an exportable surplus. Even if it was, Canada and Australia are second and third in the world in Uranium reserves, which is convenient for the country that houses their King.
Nuclear energy is green- it’s the only energy worldwide that internalizes its externalities and is made to cost what it costs to the environment.
Demanding tithes of nuclear material from commonwealth nations by royal decree is so wonderfully neo-feudal sci-fi, I love it.
Sorry but that’s an absurd way to construe the point I was making. “Energy Independence” when used in a geopolitical context involves essentially fuel-exporting nations exploiting their supply chain position in order to win political concessions from importers- such as Russia holding Northern Europe hostage over oil and fossil gas in response to European resistance to the invasion of Ukraine. Commonwealth nations share close relationships that are unlikely to degenerate to the point where Australia or Canada are invading their neighbors and holding the UK’s electricity hostage.
I know, I was just having a bubble, I sware people are far to literal on thos site compared to Reddit.
I don’t know if that’s true lol, this is reddit we’re talking about.
But yeah, I missed that you were pisstaking; my b.
Nuclear power is green energy.
Technically yes, it still creates some waste to be dealt with. I guess arguably you have the same with decommissioned turbines, solar panels, etc with other forms.
It’s the only form of energy generation that internalizes all of its own costs- including disposing waste and insuring cleanup.
If we forced oil companies to internalize the cost of fracking casualty and wastewater reinjection alone, gas would be $50/gal.
I mean, we can’t even build a rail line on time or to budget, I can’t see us being able to build nuclear reactors any time soon.
Unfortunately, renewables cannot do it alone and I wish that wasn’t the case. Pairing renewables with emission free nuclear is the only option we really have to meet current and future demands without fossil fuels.
Google search found some uranium in England: https://www.nature.com/articles/246180a0.pdf
You can definitely achieve more if you can work the supply-side as well. In theory if the smart grid were well executed then it’d be possible for consumers to modulate their heat, charging, tumble dryers etc… to provide more elasticity.
Unfortunately in a lot of places the incentives aren’t that high. I don’t have that option where I live, but in denver the lowest consumer rate is around 7c and the highest around 17c/kWh. It’s hard to invest in new appliances to exploit that difference, but if the off-peak number were 1c then I think you’d see much more take-up of smart car chargers and people delaying when they do laundry.
Aber Hinkley Point was such a roaring success, let’s pour more money down the bottomless barrel!
It’s an obvious distraction pushing the topic of nuclear power again, just days after they prepared to open massive new oil and gas production sites while stifling the well-going UK wind industry.
But there are enough people out there brain-washed by decades of anti-renewable propaganda that it will work. And in the end we have just another country failing to build the proper amount of nuclear base load AND the proper amount of renewables… but at least someone smart “thought ahead” and worked for enough fossil fuels to compensate.
Also it works so flawlessly for the French (not*), why not do it too?
*France is slowly overcoming stress-corrosion problems (35 out of 56 reactors were down, drought is another problem), and Finland celebrates the commissioning of a new reactor (albeit 14 years late), while on the other hand monthly German nuclear generation will be zero for the first time in over 50 years.
The real thing is the cost, the cost per kWh is falling so going nuke and locking in to a price that’s already above market makes no sense at all.
The Tories are ideologically opposed to renewables because of some weird culture war thing, plus they hate the idea of locally sustainable communities not being totally under the control of billionaires - people are a lot easier to scare into obedience when you can tell them their power might be shut off. The main reason though is huge projects can only go to huge companies, they don’t want lots of little solar farms they want their oil baron buddies to maintain their monopolies, that’s the only reason we still hear so much about this now allbut obsolete technology.
I totally agree and it is the same for Germany. That’s why especially wind energy for South Germany was held back for so long, how dare communities go energy independent. It seems the resistance there is broken now, at least I hope it is and not just an election promise that gets broken after the Bavarian election.
The cost of burning fossil fuels isn’t measured in pounds or dollars. Nuclear is the only tech we have that can meet current and future load. We must pair it with renewables. There is no other option right now and if we wait for fusion, it’ll be too late.
And Germany added 36M tons of emissions because they replaced the decommissioned reactors with fossil gas.
Yeah, if you tell that lie often enough it will surely become true one day… Seriously, it will happen. Just another ten thousand times or so. By current rates that should be doable by the nuclear-cult on social media in only a few weeks, so you are sooooo close to changing reality…
This happens all the time. It happened to New York State after the decommission of Indian Point, it happened to Germany, it literally happens everywhere nuclear reactors are decommissioned, because fossil fuels provide the reliable and tunable capacity of nuclear power with explicit domestic and foreign subsidies driving down its cost. We keep talking about renewables displacing fossil fuels but German fossil gas consumption is going up, not down.
The last three nuclear power plants generated 6.7 TWh until their shutdown on April 15. In the first half of 2022, the figure was 15.8 TWh.
Coal-fired power generation also fell: Lignite-fired power plants generated about 41.2 TWh, a sharp decline of 21 percent from 2022 (52.1 TWh). Net production from coal-fired power plants also decreased by 23 percent, from 26.2 TWh in 2022 down to 20.1 TWh in 2023. Electricity generation from natural gas decreased only slightly from 24.3 TWh to 23.4 TWh. In addition to gas-fired power plants for the public power supply, gas-fired plants in the mining and manufacturing sectors also supply the industrial own consumption. These approximately produced an additional 24 TWh for industrial captive use.
And we are getting the fossile gas consumption down by laws made towards changes for the industries and private households that will have to have other means of heating in the near future, although it is not an easy process. We also lead when it comes to home insulation and other means of saving energy, even our stubborn automobile industry is finally turning.
We are not going back to nuclear energy and we are going towards renewable energy more and more and it has already proofen that not even a war in Europe can change that. We will sit and watch when you fight for uranium and pay 10+ times more money than planned for the next nuclear plant that’s 14 years late and will not add to the grid, but just be finished in time to replace an old nuclear plant that is falling apart and then you pay for that and pay for the old plants because they aren’t sustainable by themselves, like these in New York:
New Yorkers are paying $40 million every month to subsidize nuclear power – over $480 million in the first year alone, nearly 200 times as much as the state is spending to develop renewable energy. And the nuclear costs will take a big jump in April 2019, because the subsidy is scheduled to increase every two years – even while solar and wind power keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
It is not working. It is not the future. It is not even a good investment anymore. And I don’t even have to talk about nuclear waste or uninsurable risks to proof it.
Renewables alone can’t meet New Yorks base load. Nuclear is the only technology that can. Gas turbines were connected to the grid to cover Indian points load which is a disaster.
Nuclear must be complemented with as much renewable capacity as possible. There is no other way.
We are not going back to nuclear energy and we are going towards renewable energy more and more and it has already proofen that not even a war in Europe can change that.
Yeah because America opened our strategic reserve wide open to keep you from freezing to death last winter.
Gas import from LNG (US) ist the lowest of all imports we do and don’t pretend it is a gift, you had too much of it and didn’t know what to do with it. It makes your country a lot of money: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/_svg/Gasimporte/Gasimporte.html
https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/start.html
To secure gas supplies for the coming winter, a storage level of 75 percent must be reached by September 1, 2023. The storage target was already reached in June 2023.
Gas imports are way down and our reserve is filled to the brim for Winter and Germans actually know how and are willing to safe energy. You can’t beat the numbers with words. It is not going to happen.
Yeah, let’s just keep burning fossil fuels, amIrite?
Burning coal is cheap, that’s why we’re here. I’ll pay more for electric today to leave a planet for our children. Wish my parents did that for me.
Only a fool would consider the cost in dollars alone.
Yeah, let’s just keep burning fossil fuels, amIrite?
Yes, that’s obviously what your nuclear fairy tales are aming for: Not building even the minimal capacity needed for base load, failing to build that insufficient capacity at a reasonable time/cost frame, failing to build the complementary renewables and then crying why you need to still burn fossil fuels in decades… while obviously blaming renewables (that you failed to build) and storage (that you denied is viable) for the failings of nuclear.
Please list the countries either planning/building or already having sufficiently modern capacities right now to cover just the minimal base load of ~30-35% of the projected electricity demand by 2050 and onward… Hint: The one country close is France, which will be able to (barely) reach 30% of their projected demand when they build all the planned new reactors… where “all” is the full 14, not the bullshit right now of only bulding 6 with 8 being optional. Because nothing about those is optional. They are the bare minimum that will be needed. But even in France you can’t honestly tell the people the required amounts and investments needed…
That’s the actual state of nuclear power right now… It’s prohibitely expensive and inefficient and only kept alive by lobbyists. And by people like you they brain-washed for decades who are now fighting their fight against renewables (that are actually also a requirement for every viable nuclear model) and cheering for every country building nuclear power even when it’s mathematically proven that it’s purely symbolical and not even close to relevant for co2-neutrality.
Why not nuclear and renewables?
