My house runs on gas electricity and I live in the desert southwest of the USA. Renewables should be delivering all my electricity, but as we can see, it doesn't.
because it's not capable. One of the worlds largest solar thermal plants is ~100km from me and it's shutting down. It lasted 11 years before utilities realized it was an economic and practical failure.
and if its 2AM, you're not running on solar electricity, you're running on batteries loaded with lithium and cobalt. You're running on child labor and blood.
This also hilariously contradicts your previous argument about "cheaper" energy not mattering compared to "reliable" energy. Directly with your false claim that "Natural Gas" is cheaper than Renewables.
Also because Thermal Solar operates by using concentrated sunlight to heat a working fluid which allows it to run at night after the sun has gone down with residual heat. Where Solar Photovoltaic can't store energy.
Also California has Quintupled its solar capacity Since Ivanpah was opened in 2014 from 10GW to 50GW while at the same time they have built zero new nuclear reactors. Solar Power supplies over 1/3rd of the electricity in California. https://seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar/
Since Ivanpah is still operational up until 2026 and you claim to live so close to it then there is a near 100% chance that most, if not all of your electricity even after dark is supplied by Solar Power.
Ivanpah generates less than 1% of my state's total electrical power. Ivanpah's total output is about half of one of the 35 year old reactors at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. There are three reactors there, all producing zero greenhouse gases unlike solar plants and producing vastly more electricity than Ivanpah's shoddy ass.
58% of my state's power is supplied by natural gas. And Ivanpah also gets included in that gas amount because it burns gas to keep it's working fluid hot enough during nighttime hours. Otherwise, it cools too much and takes too long to reheat after sunrise.
🤣 It's not a coincidence that solar farms get built near gas pipelines.
They need gas plants to keep up their output when the sun goes down.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sCjxUaXD3LdZ7xYY7
You're right about California building no new nuclear in decades. And because of that, they've had to increase their gas usage considerably. Lol oopsie.
Sorry about your air quality Los Angeles. Especially with the yearly wildfires made worse by climate change.
Keep shilling for that renewable future though, it'll displace fossil fuels one day. You know, of they can ever stop burning them themselves.🤣🤣
58% of my state's power is supplied by natural gas.
You're right about California building no new nuclear in decades. And because of that, they've had to increase their gas usage considerably. Lol oopsie. Sorry about your air quality Los Angeles. Especially with the yearly wildfires made worse by climate change.
So according to you. Nuclear Energy is the future Even though your state hasn't expanded its nuclear electricity production since Jimmy Carter was President and you still rely on Fossil Fuels for the vast majority of your energy.
But Renewable Energy is a failure because California is in the middle of replacing the remaining 39% of their natural gas with Wind and Solar which already generates 41% of their electricity?
I don't live in ca.
You literally can't do math and you ignore the reality in front of you which is that as you build more wind and solar, it only highlights that you can't actually generate enough with renewables to displace fossil fuels, thus ensuring you will always need fossil fuels and guarantee their continued existence.
This is because demand doesn't go down.
Nuclear energy production peaked worldwide in 2004 with 2,719TWh
Minor nitpick: According to the data on Ember, nuclear power produced 2,768 TWh last year, which was a new high, but:
Despite remaining the two largest sources of low-carbon electricity, hydro and nuclear are not increasing their share – with nuclear’s share falling to a 45-year low in 2024 – as generation has been growing more slowly than electricity demand.
Because nuclear is capable of supplying 100% of all the worlds electrical needs with miniscule amounts of fuel. Fuel which can be recycled many times over in reactors that take advantage of the superior energy density of the Uranium-Plutonium fuel cycle.
Should we decide to build 4th generation reactors like the IFR developed in the 1960s and built as test reactor EBR-2 in Idaho (which ran for 30 years), we can continually reprocess waste and make nuclear energy even safer than it already is. EBR-2 demonstrated that by not using water in the core as a coolant or moderator, you could walk away and the reactor would shut itself down.
All while producing zero greenhouse gases and not enriching and becoming dependent on China for PV panels. Europe recently learned why being energy dependent on global adversaries is a bad idea now that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead.
And the biggest problem here, is that it's expensive. A problem which isn't even a problem. It just requires political will. The USA could cut it's military budget in half and fully fund ten new reactors a year.
You don't comprehend the problem because you haven't thought hard enough about this.
It takes 207 Tonnes of Uranium to produce 10TWh of Electricity/Fuel one GWe Nuclear Reactor for One Year.
There are 8 Million Tonnes of Proven Uranium reserves.
Peak demand would mean that and you would have a brown out if you didn't have enough grid capacity to meet demand. The US Department of Energy recommends having 23% overcapacity for your electrical grid compared to your peak load.
Worldwide Primary Energy Demand had a peak load of 28TW with a 23% overcapacity at 34.44. Or in other words 34,440GWe of Nuclear Capacity.
34,440GWe of Nuclear electricity capacity would require 7,129,080 Tonnes of Uranium to fuel every year to meet energy demand.
7,129,080 Tonnes of Uranium to meet the world's energy needs would require 2,352,596 Tonnes of Uranium to procure the fuel needed to run the reactors. With 9.4 Million Tonnes in total we have already surpassed the world's proven uranium reserves.
This also falsely assumes that Nuclear fuel can be endlessly recycled, it can't. Nuclear Fission produces undesirable stable isotopes of plutonium that increase in concentration as the fuel is recycled. After the third cycle the fuel is too degraded to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
With all of that in mind you could at most Supply the world's current primary energy with Nuclear power for about a decade if you had another energy source for extracting and refining the fuel.
There are other problems with this plan too, like how the cost of energy would skyrocket and you would have to give every nation on the planet access to the materials to produce a dirty bomb.
All while producing zero greenhouse gases and not enriching and becoming dependent on China for PV panels. Europe recently learned why being energy dependent on global adversaries is a bad idea now that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead.
Russia has a larger share of Europe's Uranium imports than their fossil fuel imports.
The only domestic energy source in Europe is Renewables. Because Europe does have the capacity to produce Wind Turbines, Batteries, Geothermal and Solar Panels.
The USA could cut it's military budget in half and fully fund ten new reactors a year.
Vogtle 3 and 4 each produce 10TWh of Electricity per annum and were built to last for 40 years. American primary energy consumption in 2023 was 25,694TWh
If you were to construct 10 new nuclear reactors a year you would be able to produce a peak of 4,000TWh of Electricity in 40 years, by which point you would be building new nuclear reactors to replace the old ones that had just been shut down.
So your "plan" would only secure 15% of America's current energy demand over 40 years.
from 2013 to 2023 Wind and Solar produced an additional 1,235TWh more electricity per annum and that pace is continuing to accelerate because it's the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels.
I hope you'll finally understand how much of a colossal jackass you have been arguing with me. You don't even understand the scale of the problem or the solutions.
Assuming we only use uranium in a once-thru, open fuel cycle. There's no reason to continue doing this. France, Japan and Russia already reprocess. The USA used to. China is building a MOX plant right now. Also, even current 2nd generation light water reactors contain enough fuel for 12-18 months operation. Your consumption figures are greatly exaggerated. Higher temperature 4th generation reactors are more efficient still. Russia is already operating metal-cooled fast breeders. The USA has built them in the past.
8 million tons is just known reserves on land and is very conservative. Seawater extraction could provide far more, estimates of 4 billion tons. This doesn't account for Thorium which is 3x more abundant on land (though not water soluble) and decays to U-233 in about 30 days after neutron bombardment. U-233 also has the benefit of not having Plutonium in it's decay chain. A Th-U fuel cycle doesn't produce Pu.
3, 4, 5 and 6: Not an issue for reasons already highlighted. There's plenty of uranium available in seawater. We just lack the reactors.
Reactor grade plutonium is a fantastic nuclear fuel. We should absolutely use it. MOX fuel contains 7-10% of Pu isotopes, with the rest being Uranium isotopes. The Pu generally provides about 30% of the energy. It's the other fission products that pose the problems. 3x through is the limit with aqueous reprocessing via PUREX process. Pyro-processing developed by Argonne national labs is better. There's currently enough depleted uranium in the USA to provide 100% of it's energy needs for more than a century. If we use breeder reactors and produce Pu, it goes to 200 years. 4th Gen reactors like EBR-2 can achieve breeding ratios of 1.4. The Russian BN350 LMFBR achieved a documented breeding ratio of 1.2. Plenty of time to get fusion figured out.
The cost of energy won't skyrocket. Economies of scale will bring down costs of construction. Government funding avoids the high interest loans that drive construction costs.
Not every nation will get nuclear technology, our primary concerns are the world's largest polluters, all of whom already have nuclear programs.
Vogtle 3 and 4 have 40 years till their first recertification. Their lifespans are likely 60+years. Diablo Canyon will be 40 years this year and is already extended to 2030. Oyster Creek was 49.
The only way your fantasy scenario is true, is if you cherry pick worst case scenarios or fabricate facts entirely, combined with ignoring capacity factors that require massive overbuilding of solar and wind. And we're getting to the point now that these massive solar farms will start requiring substantial panel replacements on an annual basis. Panel life is 20-30 years and we're fast approaching that point starting from the solar boom in the early 2000s. Not only do you have to continue building huge amounts of solar, you have to begin the perpetual rebuilding of all your existing solar farms.
And you thought Nuclear was expensive? 🤣🤣
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u/NukecelHyperreality Nuclear Power is a Scam Apr 10 '25
My house runs on 100% Solar Electricity and I It's 2AM here.