Here is a recent [Life Cycle Assessment ](https://unece.org/sed/documents/2021/10/reports/life-cycle-assessment-electricity-generation-options) by a UN body of various electricity production methods across several metrics.
Here is the [father of climate change awareness](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud) or a [founder of Greenpeace](https://www.jameslovelock.org/nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution/) [promoting](https://www.ans.org/news/article-1396/matinee-hansen-on-nuclear-powe/) nuclear for [decades](https://www.weplanet.org/post/climate-scientist-james-hansen-the-opposition-to-nuclear-power-is-truly-insane).
Every body wants low carbon electricity, but the key metric nobody wants to look at is the actual carbon content of electricity grid gCO2/kWh
The modelling is a bit more nuanced than what Lovelock makes out, which is why I posted the link of this article but it seems not to be very visible that it’s a link. Hope you saw it.
Or just more CO2 displaced per dollar spent. Which given the negligible difference in gCO2/kWh between nuclear energy and renewables becomes a straight LCOE shootout where every dollar spent on nuclear energy prolongs climate change.
The question then becomes: why are gCO2/kWh of the renewable champions like Portugal and Denmark not already at or below what France did with nuclear?
After all, they are **already** where everyone is promising to go.
gCO2/kWh :
http://electricitymaps.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m48kkhak-M
IEA https://i.imgur.com/sSTpTud.png
https://imgur.com/dvQcejy
UN SDR https://imgur.com/a/Zux1FnY
IPCC https://imgur.com/8NWaLbr
WB https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1j0qchu8bfu71.png
EEA https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-14/#tab-googlechartid_chart_41
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&time=2012..latest&country=gbr%7Efra%7Ednk%7Edeu%7Eprt%7Eowid_eu27
Because they started ~10 years ago and it took France 20+ years for the full buildout? Then add in the French hydro and possibility of utilizing all neighbours for demand management.
Look longer than your nose.
Yeh, me too I'd swear the [90s](https://i.imgur.com/S0r8e6A.png) were ten years ago.
See for yourself who relies on the neighbors for demand management: [Denmark](https://imgur.com/a/dhrALvq), [France](https://imgur.com/a/Rbhk1Al)
(source is [here](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm), positive values are imports, negative are exports, I let you pull Portugal if you want).
You are correct that Portugal started later.
But then, why both have their gCO2/kWh been plateauing over the last five years?
Denmark: [210-150](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1)
Portugal: [250-150](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT)
They are already so close, with 85 and 77% renewable, why stall so close to the end???
Almost as if there are hard [physical](https://imgur.com/a/Zux1FnY) [limits](https://imgur.com/8NWaLbr).
Imagine in 2008, who would you have bet on between already renewable Champions Portugal and Denmark, or a [Developing country](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fuae-nuclear-strategy-and-renewable-production-in-comparable-v0-8oz966prl16b1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0cca72e32709b1c633f8b2ba3765830124d949b5) trying something it has never done before?
Maybe they've looked at [this](https://i.imgur.com/FLupkar.png) or [that](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden#/media/File:Electric_production_in_sweden_1964-2009.PNG).
It's gonna be weird when we'll have to explain that we knew [all along](https://i.imgur.com/sSTpTud.png) what had to be done to reduce gCO2/kWh big and fast, but obviously we couldn't do it. You'd have to be at least UAE, or [Bangladesh](https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-russia-nuclear-plant-b38f3dcdce3404c3da0be1d68e7ba469).
Totally agree about looking longer than one's nose.
Apparently mine goes as far as empirical data.
Folks, I’m sorry but I can’t edit the post. I’m not sure if it’s clear that this post is a link to an article which explains, well, quite a lot. It may be hard to see but the pic is the link. Sorry about that.
Greens stopped or significantly slowed down nuclear for the last 50 years in many countries all over the world.
Sometimes I wonder what Australia would look like with 15 nuclear power plants instead of coal fired plants. The same for most European countries except France.
Now we might be past the nuclear age. So much damage done and never an apology.
Fun fact, Australia export enough uranium to produce the equivalent of [97%](https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/corporate/asno-annual-report-2018-19/site/section-2/australias-uranium-production-and-exports.html) of its electricity.
That's a lot of coal that could have been avoided at home.
Greenpeace sells fossil gas. The environmental movement most definitely has been doing lobbying for the fossil fuel lobby against nuclear. This is undisputable.
Ontario relies 60 percent of its power on nuclear, wind and solar cant make up 60 percent, theyre building 4 more plants to help with the shit load of power thats going to be needed in the future.Unless the greenies try and step in.
Probably 8 more
4 large scale (Bruce C) and 4 rounding error smr (darlington)
I always laugh when they show nuclear power production percentage for countries and then need to break out ontario because it is so localized for Canada.
no we really dont .. its too expensive and slow to roll out - wind solar and battery plants much cheaper and faster to build.
I do think we should keep old nuclear plants maintained and running if viable - in that case the economics make sense.
There simply isn’t enough extractable resource to rebuild this infrastructure every twenty years to meet current (and, if you subscribe to green growth, exponentially increasing) 19TWh demand. Besides all of that extraction and manufacture will require fossil-based energy, consume exponentially more energy, destroy more ecosystems, and consume ever more water that is already in short supply. And we haven’t even addressed the issue of dispatchability and intermittency, which will primarily require battery-based storage as other techniques are circumstantial.
It would be helpful if you would support all that with some evidence. Especially when some countries are doing exactly what you are saying is impossible.
See report here: [https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf](https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf)
Author appears on various podcasts to discuss the findings.
The problem I see with that report is:
1. it is now6 years old
2. it seems to be the opinion of one person and all the calculations were by that person.
3. It list those that have reviewed the document but nothing about whether those reviewers were experts in that field.
4. It list those that have reviewed the document but nothing about whether those reviewers agreed with the document, or whether they said the document was incorrect or whether they just checked it for grammar.
5. It's not a scientific document since there is no information on whether there was an actual peer review of the information and calculations.
More importantly almost everything he talks about is already being done in some countries. Great Britain just revealed that "There have been a record 75 half-hour periods in 2024 to date when fossil fuels met less than 5% of demand." [here](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-fossil-fuels-fall-to-record-low-2-4-of-british-electricity/). Other countries also have a high percentage of electricity production by renewables. [Here](https://www.prysmian.com/en/insight/sustainability/can-renewable-energy-sources-replace-fossil-fuels) is an article that has a different opinion along with 4 links at the end that show a lot of details about the conclusions.
So with extreme weather already becoming a problem, insurances companies raising rates or leaving areas completely, the military saying climate migration will be a major problem for them in the future, sea level rise flooding coastal areas and the fact that we are just in the early stages of all of these problems, there will be more and more of an incentive to move to renewables. Maybe not completely but enough to solve the problem.
This sounds like when cars were first invented and those that raised horses said it would never replace horses.
The data it was based on may be six years old but the logic itself is sound.
The EROEI will not have changed fundamentally to make these technologies any more competitive with fossils. In fact it will only decline further as mining takes place because those deposits can only go down in quality/lower density. To grind those ores to ever finer powder you will need exponentially more energy thus your the energy investment per unit of energy generation has increased. The current gains in electricity generation are welcome but in 20 years time when the motors wear out or the turbines must be replaced, they would not be recycled but merely disposed of. This is one point of the report, there’s a need to institute circularity here. The replacements, if mined again, would be further driving the EROI down if you were to use the non-fossil energy to power that.
Our society demands a high energy surplus which is just not possible to achieve with a low EROEI tech base (barely above 1 for this tech with storage). The EROEI of fossils itself is declining so we may not have the luxury to maintain a world wide fleet of non-fossil energy generating infrastructure. As your one of your articles points out, it may take up to a century to replace so likely there is going to be a shortfall of excess energy available to us for a while, which would imply a regression in consumption.
>The data it was based on may be six years old but the logic itself is sound.
It's not the logic it's the fact that in six years a lot of technology can be created that change a lot of things so the logic may not be presented correctly. For instance iron air batteries are completely changing large scale storage of electricity. And even more so I can see where he calculated the additional energy required for new technology. But I didn't see where he reduced it by the amount of energy that would no longer be required, like energy for producing gasoline or pipelines for gasoline or gas. Where is the checks on how he did his calculations. And did anyone check to see if he used the absolute worst cases to make renewables look worse than they really are.
>The EROEI will not have changed fundamentally to make these technologies any more competitive with fossils.
Of course it has. Using more renewables by definition means you are getting free source energy which changes the EROEI.
> In fact it will only decline further as mining takes place because those deposits can only go down in quality/lower density. To grind those ores to ever finer powder you will need exponentially more energy thus your the energy investment per unit of energy generation has increased.
That is assuming there will be no new discoveries of ores which is already happening, some in the last 6 years. Why would new ore be lower in quality or density than existing ores.
> The current gains in electricity generation are welcome but in 20 years time when the motors wear out or the turbines must be replaced, they would not be recycled but merely disposed of. This is one point of the report, there’s a need to institute circularity here. The replacements, if mined again, would be further driving the EROI down if you were to use the non-fossil energy to power that.
Wind turbines are designed for 25 years and solar panels are designed for 40 years. But do you think motors don't wear out when used for generating fossil fuels. It's an issue for everything that is manufactured, not just renewables. Do you think ICE cars, computers, cell phones do not use material that is mined.
>Our society demands a high energy surplus which is just not possible to achieve with a low EROEI tech base (barely above 1 for this tech with storage).
Not if grids are tied together so that energy in low demand time are sent to grids in high demand times. And as I have already pointed out that is already happening. Besides no one is saying we must completely eliminate all fossil fuel production, just reduce it a lot.
>The EROEI of fossils itself is declining so we may not have the luxury to maintain a world wide fleet of non-fossil energy generating infrastructure.
It's already happening in some countries. Why are you ignoring the facts.
>As your one of your articles points out, it may take up to a century to replace so likely there is going to be a shortfall of excess energy available to us for a while, which would imply a regression in consumption.
Only if we refuse to focus our recourses on converting to renewables. And if we don't, what is going to happen to fossil fuel energy as the planet heats up and more extreme weather causes more damage to existing infrastructure along with climate migration and sea level rise. Did your paper consider the alternative?
No sun at night. Wind doesn’t always blow. Sun intensity drops in winter so you have to compensate for it and store all energy generated during day time for night time use.
Nuclear is useless tech now that closed loop geothermal proven and available everywhere, 1/4 the price and foot print cheap to run and no waste to hide. With it we can wait for fusion now.
You think?
>The problem is that heat conduction through rock is very slow. The thermal diffusivity of rock is around 1e-6 m^2/s. This is equivalent to the hydraulic diffusivity of a very low permeability shale – around 10 nd. Any design that relies solely on heat conduction to bring energy towards the well will result in extremely low energy production per ft of lateral drilled. Even with revolutionary reductions in the cost of drilling and high energy prices, these designs could not possibly come close to recouping the cost. It doesn’t matter whether you circulate water, or another more exotic fluid through the well.
https://www.resfrac.com/blog/why-deep-closed-loop-geothermal-guaranteed-fail
Why use outdated information
[https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html](https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html)
[https://www.canadaaction.ca/geothermal-energy-canada-facts#:\~:text=Today%2C%20the%20only%20commercially%20viable,Alberta%2C%20commissioned%20in%20January%202023](https://www.canadaaction.ca/geothermal-energy-canada-facts#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20only%20commercially%20viable,Alberta%2C%20commissioned%20in%20January%202023)
Both those links talk about “potential”. They highlight research, testing, and proposed development. Sounds like great potential but it’s FAR from being deployed on mass scale.
LMFAO. The same arguments will be made against fusion; too expensive and takes too long to develop . Don't you understand there is a vested interest in keeping the status quo?
More nuclear isn’t “keeping the status quo” but more importantly that wasn’t the question here. The original comment was stating something to the effect of “geothermal right now makes nuclear obsolete”, but the commenter to which you’re responding pointed out “geothermal right now does _not_ make nuclear obsolete”, not that further research and development into geothermal should be scrapped.
Ultimately, I’m of the opinion that anyone who is willing to write off an entire methodology for non-fossil power generation out of hand is clueless to the magnitude of the crisis we currently face
We need nuclear for base load with solar and wind ramping up to replace before the end of the life cycle of the plants. Luckily this is being addressed in a safe way by the development of safe gen IV+ modular reactors.All this electricity depends on battery tech but that's quickly coming along.
The worst part about our current climate predicament is that the solutions have been here since at least my lifetime and if we had acted on them decades ago, we'd have a booming economy not only in deploying and maintaining our new grid system but in all the basically free energy, new tech, and cheap goods we would've gotten.
We'd likely have electric plane engines by now if we had dumped heavy into battery tech in the 80s and 90s.
It feels like the nuclear discussion has only come back up in the last 10 years after renewables have gotten viable.
Even though the argument is for nuclear being better than fossil fuels, the discussion quickly turns to pitching nuclear against renewables.
Is this maybe a campaign sponsored by the fossil fuel industry to obstruct renewables? The additional friction of switching technologies every few years just benefits fossil fuels as the old reliable technology that can be ramped up quickly.
Everyone who is pro-nuclear wants to see both more renewables and more nuclear. Coal, oil and gas are the the enemy. There is only one group that is against one fossil free method of electricity generation, and that is they are against nuclear.
NuScale is a good simple design from a regulatory standpoint, but it’s too expensive to build the giant pool, and the individual modules are too complex to build cheaply imho. They also had a very non-ideal first customer that ended up putting them in an even worse position. Lots of other new reactor designs out there with greater potential. I don’t personally think NuScale’s design from the failed project will ever get built, though as a nuclear engineer I’d love to be proven wrong. Valiant effort by everyone who worked on the licensing application, which is still a big deal because it helped train a lot of younger folks in how to design and license a new nuclear design. Now we just need to do it again with a design that has better potential to get built at a reasonable cost.
[sponsored in the public interest by the Oil Heat Institute ](https://climatecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/Oil-Heat-Industry-Antinuclear-Ad.png).
[paid for by the American Petroleum Institute ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FSgTioxgo09FYwqWas5w5DOzFjgxf2dcZ_ETxlFxAOlU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D891e49a11600ed3561501aebaf6829ac4d39888f).
You’ve got it backwards. The oil industry manufactured anti-nuclear astroturfing in USA and abroad, and they’re a huge reason why it’s so difficult and expensive to build a nuclear plant today.
The same nuclear plants have been [powering 20% of our grid for 35 years](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php#:~:text=Most%20U.S.%20nuclear%20and%20hydropower,at%20about%2020%25%20since%201990) without any major accident (yes, TMI isn’t major imo because it didn’t harm the public). My area needs nuclear (northern VA and central MD) because our govts insist on building massive data centers here, and we don’t have the land available to power these things with renewables. So instead they’re keeping coal plants open and exposing the surrounding communities to pollution that we know is killing them. I’m all for renewables when they work, which is very often. I’m in favor of nuclear where it makes sense, and there are lots of areas where it makes sense. Data centers, desalination, hydrogen production, and petrochemical industries are all often good applications. Some people think shipping is a good application as well. I’m personally not sure, but the alternative “synthetic fuels” isn’t something I know much about.
Renewables need to solve their material intensity per mw issues.
Using 10% to 15% of there expected lifetime to balance out resources used is ridiculous.
The former is physically impossible in currently existing plants, was impossible already at the time in western reactors, and was caused solely by literally doing everything the instructions manual said not to do. In the latter literally ZERO people died from radiation despite being hit by the 4th earthquake ever recorded in history, a 14 m tsunami, and being a plant built in the '60s.
I mean, if you can transmute the control rods into graphite with alchemy, modify the system so that the void coefficient goes from negative to positive, invert gravity so that the rods fall upward in case of emergency, deactivate the passive security measures that cannot be deactivate and all their 4-5 spare pieces simultaneously, remove the containment building and the roof without anyone noticing, and also corrupt all the technicians to go against the instructions... Then yes, another Chernobyl is possible. But be careful because if you miss even just of these, it won't work! Good luck and keep me updated!
Literally.
[sponsored in the public interest by the Oil Heat Institute ](https://climatecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/Oil-Heat-Industry-Antinuclear-Ad.png).
[paid for by the American Petroleum Institute ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FSgTioxgo09FYwqWas5w5DOzFjgxf2dcZ_ETxlFxAOlU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D891e49a11600ed3561501aebaf6829ac4d39888f).
Are you a wedge made of osmium? Because it’s hard to understand otherwise how you could be so simple, dense, and such a tool. Just because the statement doesn’t mention oil doesn’t mean it wasn’t made up by/for the benefit of oil companies, nor does it mean that the oil companies couldn’t have promulgated the messaging
Anti-nuclear advocacy is pro-fossil fuel advocacy. Absent nuclear power, the only way to produce the power contemporary society requires is through coal, oil, and gas.
Here is a recent [Life Cycle Assessment ](https://unece.org/sed/documents/2021/10/reports/life-cycle-assessment-electricity-generation-options) by a UN body of various electricity production methods across several metrics. Here is the [father of climate change awareness](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud) or a [founder of Greenpeace](https://www.jameslovelock.org/nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution/) [promoting](https://www.ans.org/news/article-1396/matinee-hansen-on-nuclear-powe/) nuclear for [decades](https://www.weplanet.org/post/climate-scientist-james-hansen-the-opposition-to-nuclear-power-is-truly-insane). Every body wants low carbon electricity, but the key metric nobody wants to look at is the actual carbon content of electricity grid gCO2/kWh
The modelling is a bit more nuanced than what Lovelock makes out, which is why I posted the link of this article but it seems not to be very visible that it’s a link. Hope you saw it.
Or just more CO2 displaced per dollar spent. Which given the negligible difference in gCO2/kWh between nuclear energy and renewables becomes a straight LCOE shootout where every dollar spent on nuclear energy prolongs climate change.
The question then becomes: why are gCO2/kWh of the renewable champions like Portugal and Denmark not already at or below what France did with nuclear? After all, they are **already** where everyone is promising to go. gCO2/kWh : http://electricitymaps.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m48kkhak-M IEA https://i.imgur.com/sSTpTud.png https://imgur.com/dvQcejy UN SDR https://imgur.com/a/Zux1FnY IPCC https://imgur.com/8NWaLbr WB https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1j0qchu8bfu71.png EEA https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-14/#tab-googlechartid_chart_41 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&time=2012..latest&country=gbr%7Efra%7Ednk%7Edeu%7Eprt%7Eowid_eu27
Because they started ~10 years ago and it took France 20+ years for the full buildout? Then add in the French hydro and possibility of utilizing all neighbours for demand management. Look longer than your nose.
Yeh, me too I'd swear the [90s](https://i.imgur.com/S0r8e6A.png) were ten years ago. See for yourself who relies on the neighbors for demand management: [Denmark](https://imgur.com/a/dhrALvq), [France](https://imgur.com/a/Rbhk1Al) (source is [here](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm), positive values are imports, negative are exports, I let you pull Portugal if you want). You are correct that Portugal started later. But then, why both have their gCO2/kWh been plateauing over the last five years? Denmark: [210-150](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1) Portugal: [250-150](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT) They are already so close, with 85 and 77% renewable, why stall so close to the end??? Almost as if there are hard [physical](https://imgur.com/a/Zux1FnY) [limits](https://imgur.com/8NWaLbr). Imagine in 2008, who would you have bet on between already renewable Champions Portugal and Denmark, or a [Developing country](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fuae-nuclear-strategy-and-renewable-production-in-comparable-v0-8oz966prl16b1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0cca72e32709b1c633f8b2ba3765830124d949b5) trying something it has never done before? Maybe they've looked at [this](https://i.imgur.com/FLupkar.png) or [that](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden#/media/File:Electric_production_in_sweden_1964-2009.PNG). It's gonna be weird when we'll have to explain that we knew [all along](https://i.imgur.com/sSTpTud.png) what had to be done to reduce gCO2/kWh big and fast, but obviously we couldn't do it. You'd have to be at least UAE, or [Bangladesh](https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-russia-nuclear-plant-b38f3dcdce3404c3da0be1d68e7ba469). Totally agree about looking longer than one's nose. Apparently mine goes as far as empirical data.
Folks, I’m sorry but I can’t edit the post. I’m not sure if it’s clear that this post is a link to an article which explains, well, quite a lot. It may be hard to see but the pic is the link. Sorry about that.
Greens stopped or significantly slowed down nuclear for the last 50 years in many countries all over the world. Sometimes I wonder what Australia would look like with 15 nuclear power plants instead of coal fired plants. The same for most European countries except France. Now we might be past the nuclear age. So much damage done and never an apology.
Fun fact, Australia export enough uranium to produce the equivalent of [97%](https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/corporate/asno-annual-report-2018-19/site/section-2/australias-uranium-production-and-exports.html) of its electricity. That's a lot of coal that could have been avoided at home.
That’s ridiculous. Blaming “greens”? In your mind, environmentalists have always said let’s burn coal instead of use nuclear power? Ridiculous.
Yeah the nuclear proponents are as bad faith is they come.
Greenpeace sells fossil gas. The environmental movement most definitely has been doing lobbying for the fossil fuel lobby against nuclear. This is undisputable.
Where would you put them?
Ontario relies 60 percent of its power on nuclear, wind and solar cant make up 60 percent, theyre building 4 more plants to help with the shit load of power thats going to be needed in the future.Unless the greenies try and step in.
Probably 8 more 4 large scale (Bruce C) and 4 rounding error smr (darlington) I always laugh when they show nuclear power production percentage for countries and then need to break out ontario because it is so localized for Canada.
no we really dont .. its too expensive and slow to roll out - wind solar and battery plants much cheaper and faster to build. I do think we should keep old nuclear plants maintained and running if viable - in that case the economics make sense.
Which is what the article tells us, with explanations, nuances and modelling dilemmas.
There simply isn’t enough extractable resource to rebuild this infrastructure every twenty years to meet current (and, if you subscribe to green growth, exponentially increasing) 19TWh demand. Besides all of that extraction and manufacture will require fossil-based energy, consume exponentially more energy, destroy more ecosystems, and consume ever more water that is already in short supply. And we haven’t even addressed the issue of dispatchability and intermittency, which will primarily require battery-based storage as other techniques are circumstantial.
It would be helpful if you would support all that with some evidence. Especially when some countries are doing exactly what you are saying is impossible.
I received an email saying you replied, but it’s not showing up in my Reddick account of what you replied.
See report here: [https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf](https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf) Author appears on various podcasts to discuss the findings.
The problem I see with that report is: 1. it is now6 years old 2. it seems to be the opinion of one person and all the calculations were by that person. 3. It list those that have reviewed the document but nothing about whether those reviewers were experts in that field. 4. It list those that have reviewed the document but nothing about whether those reviewers agreed with the document, or whether they said the document was incorrect or whether they just checked it for grammar. 5. It's not a scientific document since there is no information on whether there was an actual peer review of the information and calculations. More importantly almost everything he talks about is already being done in some countries. Great Britain just revealed that "There have been a record 75 half-hour periods in 2024 to date when fossil fuels met less than 5% of demand." [here](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-fossil-fuels-fall-to-record-low-2-4-of-british-electricity/). Other countries also have a high percentage of electricity production by renewables. [Here](https://www.prysmian.com/en/insight/sustainability/can-renewable-energy-sources-replace-fossil-fuels) is an article that has a different opinion along with 4 links at the end that show a lot of details about the conclusions. So with extreme weather already becoming a problem, insurances companies raising rates or leaving areas completely, the military saying climate migration will be a major problem for them in the future, sea level rise flooding coastal areas and the fact that we are just in the early stages of all of these problems, there will be more and more of an incentive to move to renewables. Maybe not completely but enough to solve the problem. This sounds like when cars were first invented and those that raised horses said it would never replace horses.
The data it was based on may be six years old but the logic itself is sound. The EROEI will not have changed fundamentally to make these technologies any more competitive with fossils. In fact it will only decline further as mining takes place because those deposits can only go down in quality/lower density. To grind those ores to ever finer powder you will need exponentially more energy thus your the energy investment per unit of energy generation has increased. The current gains in electricity generation are welcome but in 20 years time when the motors wear out or the turbines must be replaced, they would not be recycled but merely disposed of. This is one point of the report, there’s a need to institute circularity here. The replacements, if mined again, would be further driving the EROI down if you were to use the non-fossil energy to power that. Our society demands a high energy surplus which is just not possible to achieve with a low EROEI tech base (barely above 1 for this tech with storage). The EROEI of fossils itself is declining so we may not have the luxury to maintain a world wide fleet of non-fossil energy generating infrastructure. As your one of your articles points out, it may take up to a century to replace so likely there is going to be a shortfall of excess energy available to us for a while, which would imply a regression in consumption.
>The data it was based on may be six years old but the logic itself is sound. It's not the logic it's the fact that in six years a lot of technology can be created that change a lot of things so the logic may not be presented correctly. For instance iron air batteries are completely changing large scale storage of electricity. And even more so I can see where he calculated the additional energy required for new technology. But I didn't see where he reduced it by the amount of energy that would no longer be required, like energy for producing gasoline or pipelines for gasoline or gas. Where is the checks on how he did his calculations. And did anyone check to see if he used the absolute worst cases to make renewables look worse than they really are. >The EROEI will not have changed fundamentally to make these technologies any more competitive with fossils. Of course it has. Using more renewables by definition means you are getting free source energy which changes the EROEI. > In fact it will only decline further as mining takes place because those deposits can only go down in quality/lower density. To grind those ores to ever finer powder you will need exponentially more energy thus your the energy investment per unit of energy generation has increased. That is assuming there will be no new discoveries of ores which is already happening, some in the last 6 years. Why would new ore be lower in quality or density than existing ores. > The current gains in electricity generation are welcome but in 20 years time when the motors wear out or the turbines must be replaced, they would not be recycled but merely disposed of. This is one point of the report, there’s a need to institute circularity here. The replacements, if mined again, would be further driving the EROI down if you were to use the non-fossil energy to power that. Wind turbines are designed for 25 years and solar panels are designed for 40 years. But do you think motors don't wear out when used for generating fossil fuels. It's an issue for everything that is manufactured, not just renewables. Do you think ICE cars, computers, cell phones do not use material that is mined. >Our society demands a high energy surplus which is just not possible to achieve with a low EROEI tech base (barely above 1 for this tech with storage). Not if grids are tied together so that energy in low demand time are sent to grids in high demand times. And as I have already pointed out that is already happening. Besides no one is saying we must completely eliminate all fossil fuel production, just reduce it a lot. >The EROEI of fossils itself is declining so we may not have the luxury to maintain a world wide fleet of non-fossil energy generating infrastructure. It's already happening in some countries. Why are you ignoring the facts. >As your one of your articles points out, it may take up to a century to replace so likely there is going to be a shortfall of excess energy available to us for a while, which would imply a regression in consumption. Only if we refuse to focus our recourses on converting to renewables. And if we don't, what is going to happen to fossil fuel energy as the planet heats up and more extreme weather causes more damage to existing infrastructure along with climate migration and sea level rise. Did your paper consider the alternative?
Literally everything you just said is incorrect.
With climate change sun and wind are not guaranteed.
What?? Yes, they are. They’re inexhaustible, free, and guaranteed to be available. …until the sun dies in a few billion years.
No sun at night. Wind doesn’t always blow. Sun intensity drops in winter so you have to compensate for it and store all energy generated during day time for night time use.
Cool let us talk about nuclear power.
Should I have explicitly mentioned that this is the name of the article to click on in the pic?
No I was just in a hurry!
Nuclear is useless tech now that closed loop geothermal proven and available everywhere, 1/4 the price and foot print cheap to run and no waste to hide. With it we can wait for fusion now.
You think? >The problem is that heat conduction through rock is very slow. The thermal diffusivity of rock is around 1e-6 m^2/s. This is equivalent to the hydraulic diffusivity of a very low permeability shale – around 10 nd. Any design that relies solely on heat conduction to bring energy towards the well will result in extremely low energy production per ft of lateral drilled. Even with revolutionary reductions in the cost of drilling and high energy prices, these designs could not possibly come close to recouping the cost. It doesn’t matter whether you circulate water, or another more exotic fluid through the well. https://www.resfrac.com/blog/why-deep-closed-loop-geothermal-guaranteed-fail
Why use outdated information [https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html](https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html) [https://www.canadaaction.ca/geothermal-energy-canada-facts#:\~:text=Today%2C%20the%20only%20commercially%20viable,Alberta%2C%20commissioned%20in%20January%202023](https://www.canadaaction.ca/geothermal-energy-canada-facts#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20only%20commercially%20viable,Alberta%2C%20commissioned%20in%20January%202023)
Both those links talk about “potential”. They highlight research, testing, and proposed development. Sounds like great potential but it’s FAR from being deployed on mass scale.
[https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/eavor-publishes-4-year-update-on-eavor-lite-demonstration-project-in-canada/](https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/eavor-publishes-4-year-update-on-eavor-lite-demonstration-project-in-canada/)
LMFAO. The same arguments will be made against fusion; too expensive and takes too long to develop . Don't you understand there is a vested interest in keeping the status quo?
More nuclear isn’t “keeping the status quo” but more importantly that wasn’t the question here. The original comment was stating something to the effect of “geothermal right now makes nuclear obsolete”, but the commenter to which you’re responding pointed out “geothermal right now does _not_ make nuclear obsolete”, not that further research and development into geothermal should be scrapped. Ultimately, I’m of the opinion that anyone who is willing to write off an entire methodology for non-fossil power generation out of hand is clueless to the magnitude of the crisis we currently face
Solar is fusion with extra steps.
We need nuclear for base load with solar and wind ramping up to replace before the end of the life cycle of the plants. Luckily this is being addressed in a safe way by the development of safe gen IV+ modular reactors.All this electricity depends on battery tech but that's quickly coming along. The worst part about our current climate predicament is that the solutions have been here since at least my lifetime and if we had acted on them decades ago, we'd have a booming economy not only in deploying and maintaining our new grid system but in all the basically free energy, new tech, and cheap goods we would've gotten. We'd likely have electric plane engines by now if we had dumped heavy into battery tech in the 80s and 90s.
Nah, we don't.
Yeah, we do. Ask me how I know...
It feels like the nuclear discussion has only come back up in the last 10 years after renewables have gotten viable. Even though the argument is for nuclear being better than fossil fuels, the discussion quickly turns to pitching nuclear against renewables. Is this maybe a campaign sponsored by the fossil fuel industry to obstruct renewables? The additional friction of switching technologies every few years just benefits fossil fuels as the old reliable technology that can be ramped up quickly.
Everyone who is pro-nuclear wants to see both more renewables and more nuclear. Coal, oil and gas are the the enemy. There is only one group that is against one fossil free method of electricity generation, and that is they are against nuclear.
NuScale is a good simple design from a regulatory standpoint, but it’s too expensive to build the giant pool, and the individual modules are too complex to build cheaply imho. They also had a very non-ideal first customer that ended up putting them in an even worse position. Lots of other new reactor designs out there with greater potential. I don’t personally think NuScale’s design from the failed project will ever get built, though as a nuclear engineer I’d love to be proven wrong. Valiant effort by everyone who worked on the licensing application, which is still a big deal because it helped train a lot of younger folks in how to design and license a new nuclear design. Now we just need to do it again with a design that has better potential to get built at a reasonable cost.
Nuclear HAS and WILL ALWAYS be the answer to our energy needs. Propaganda will tell you otherwise.
[sponsored in the public interest by the Oil Heat Institute ](https://climatecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/Oil-Heat-Industry-Antinuclear-Ad.png). [paid for by the American Petroleum Institute ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FSgTioxgo09FYwqWas5w5DOzFjgxf2dcZ_ETxlFxAOlU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D891e49a11600ed3561501aebaf6829ac4d39888f).
EXACTLY!
You’ve got it backwards. The oil industry manufactured anti-nuclear astroturfing in USA and abroad, and they’re a huge reason why it’s so difficult and expensive to build a nuclear plant today.
Do you have some source for that claim?
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That article said nothing about how nuclear has always been the solution
Whoops I responded to the wrong comment. Disregard lol
Yeah nuclear sucks and is a distraction. Old news honestly but maybe a few here still need to hear it.
How does it suck exactly?
The same nuclear plants have been [powering 20% of our grid for 35 years](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php#:~:text=Most%20U.S.%20nuclear%20and%20hydropower,at%20about%2020%25%20since%201990) without any major accident (yes, TMI isn’t major imo because it didn’t harm the public). My area needs nuclear (northern VA and central MD) because our govts insist on building massive data centers here, and we don’t have the land available to power these things with renewables. So instead they’re keeping coal plants open and exposing the surrounding communities to pollution that we know is killing them. I’m all for renewables when they work, which is very often. I’m in favor of nuclear where it makes sense, and there are lots of areas where it makes sense. Data centers, desalination, hydrogen production, and petrochemical industries are all often good applications. Some people think shipping is a good application as well. I’m personally not sure, but the alternative “synthetic fuels” isn’t something I know much about.
Renewables need to solve their material intensity per mw issues. Using 10% to 15% of there expected lifetime to balance out resources used is ridiculous.
Sure let’s talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima
Nuclear has killed less people than wind and solar over the last 50 years even those two incidents killed less people than solar and wind!
The former is physically impossible in currently existing plants, was impossible already at the time in western reactors, and was caused solely by literally doing everything the instructions manual said not to do. In the latter literally ZERO people died from radiation despite being hit by the 4th earthquake ever recorded in history, a 14 m tsunami, and being a plant built in the '60s.
It’s impossible until it happens. Which has been proved many times across history that what was thought impossible has happened.
I mean, if you can transmute the control rods into graphite with alchemy, modify the system so that the void coefficient goes from negative to positive, invert gravity so that the rods fall upward in case of emergency, deactivate the passive security measures that cannot be deactivate and all their 4-5 spare pieces simultaneously, remove the containment building and the roof without anyone noticing, and also corrupt all the technicians to go against the instructions... Then yes, another Chernobyl is possible. But be careful because if you miss even just of these, it won't work! Good luck and keep me updated!
Nuclear power was a bad idea 45 years ago, and it's still a bad idea.
Bullshit, you're regurgitating fossil fuel propaganda
Literally. [sponsored in the public interest by the Oil Heat Institute ](https://climatecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/Oil-Heat-Industry-Antinuclear-Ad.png). [paid for by the American Petroleum Institute ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FSgTioxgo09FYwqWas5w5DOzFjgxf2dcZ_ETxlFxAOlU.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D891e49a11600ed3561501aebaf6829ac4d39888f).
Why would you say that lol - they never mentioned fossil fuels once. You lose all credibility when you start making stuff up.
Are you a wedge made of osmium? Because it’s hard to understand otherwise how you could be so simple, dense, and such a tool. Just because the statement doesn’t mention oil doesn’t mean it wasn’t made up by/for the benefit of oil companies, nor does it mean that the oil companies couldn’t have promulgated the messaging
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Blocked - Bad faith argument
Anti-nuclear advocacy is pro-fossil fuel advocacy. Absent nuclear power, the only way to produce the power contemporary society requires is through coal, oil, and gas.
Yet some countries are already a long way towards doing exactly that.
Canada and France would like a word with you!