The issue is that renewables could have already (mostly) replaced fossil fuels in electricity production, which would have been better in the short to mid term. What OP is wrong about is blaming the anti-nuclear movement instead of the pro-fossil fuels “movement” (fossil fuel company lobbyists).
No they couldn’t have. Both fission and renewables require either fossil fuels or energy storage to build a grid off of them. They really do not complement each other well. They compete with each other; they do not complement each other.
Yes, that’d have been ideal. But what you said was still wrong, right? Nuclear went down and renewables went up. Therefore renewables replaced nuclear.
Fair, it would have been more accurate to say that the plan was to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with renewables in a reasonably short timeframe.
But given the current political trajectory, coal use is going to increase again - AFAIK it already did in the US.
If the demand is faster than the curve to replace fossil fuels, and then nuclear starts to go down thanks to not replacing old reactors, we’re going to go back to the fossil fuels. Because apparently we can’t touch demand, that has to go up.
The chart in the post indicates that demand went down … some of that might have been replaced by electricity imports depending on what the chart actually shows, but AFAIK those weren’t that substantial.
The issue is that renewables could have already (mostly) replaced fossil fuels in electricity production, which would have been better in the short to mid term. What OP is wrong about is blaming the anti-nuclear movement instead of the pro-fossil fuels “movement” (fossil fuel company lobbyists).
No they couldn’t have. Both fission and renewables require either fossil fuels or energy storage to build a grid off of them. They really do not complement each other well. They compete with each other; they do not complement each other.
Yes, that’d have been ideal. But what you said was still wrong, right? Nuclear went down and renewables went up. Therefore renewables replaced nuclear.
Hell, coal is even at like a third of its peak.
Fair, it would have been more accurate to say that the plan was to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with renewables in a reasonably short timeframe.
But given the current political trajectory, coal use is going to increase again - AFAIK it already did in the US.
If the demand is faster than the curve to replace fossil fuels, and then nuclear starts to go down thanks to not replacing old reactors, we’re going to go back to the fossil fuels. Because apparently we can’t touch demand, that has to go up.
The chart in the post indicates that demand went down … some of that might have been replaced by electricity imports depending on what the chart actually shows, but AFAIK those weren’t that substantial.