We’re constantly making stupid decisions concerning energy. I mean we know about the planet, climate change, sustainability for a long time. Even the predictions in old geography books I found from the 80s are pretty much the right direction… First decision to eventually maybe cut down on nuclear was in 2002… We could probably have settled it by now. If it weren’t for stupid politics, big oil and gas lobbying and our politicians (to this day) trying to get hooked on energy from some wannabe dictators who (surprise) are going to blackmail us at some point.
I think the only sane option is to -at some point- get over it, look ahead and try to come up with a solution. And that’s a big investment into renewables, storage and the energy grid. So by now the first people we need to blame is everyone who isn’t en route towards a better future. I mean we can also blame Merkel. But that in itself isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Sure we are. But I reserve a special place for people who understand that we need to get off fossil fuels but can’t see that that is the most important energy choice of all, by several orders of magnitude, so that if you have the choice to do something else that might be a good idea in its own right, but it would make achieving that harder, you absolutely should not take that choice.
Hmmh. I mean there’s basically 2 options in the mid- and long-term. Renewables, and fusion energy (but we haven figured out that one, yet). Everything else is in limited supply. Oil and gas is predicted to last us for another 50 years, we got plenty coal, that’s a few 100(?) years and uranium is about 40 years until it gets proceedingly more expensive to dig it up. So we shouldn’t be investing in either of those more than we absolutely have to. Though I read maybe we can invent technology to pull uranium out of the ocean at a somewhat reasonable price.
Nuclear reactors are built with a lifespan measured in decades, not centuries, so investing in them when there are decades of economically viable fuel left is reasonable. I couldn’t find your 40 year number (I saw 230) but either way, it shouldn’t be a problem.
It will be a problem at some point, but not so that we should avoid it now.
I mean I guess if it is indeed 40-70 years… We’re looking at 5-10 years for all the planning and the permits… At the current construction timeframes we see in other countries, it’s another 15 years to build the thing. So if we decide to build nuclear power plants right now, it’s some 20-30 years until they start producing energy. And you’re certainly right, we need to look at the long-term picture in centuries, but also measure in decades. For reference, a nuclear power plant is good for about 40-50 years. On the upside, uranium ore isn’t the main cost of nuclear power. Even if it’s 3x or 5x as expensive as today, that’ll only make electricity like 1-2ct more expensive. But the downside is, we only have a few decades left until we definitely need to put in more effort, so that additional effort is going to cut into environmental impact, price and everything. And it also means another transitioning period of 20-30 years because we need energy in the next few years, and building them is slow. That’s then going to be fueled by yet more coal. Which isn’t great either.
I think everything has it’s time. But it doesn’t look to me like nuclear fission is the energy source of the future. At least not for Germany with our situation as is. It’d just be transitioning from one mid-term sustainable solution to another mid-term sustainable solution and spending money and more carbon dioxide to make it happen. But in the mid to long term, we need some kind of proper solution anyway. Something that’s cheap and doesn’t require constant digging up of finite resources. And by now we got the opportunity to go straight for that.
We’re constantly making stupid decisions concerning energy. I mean we know about the planet, climate change, sustainability for a long time. Even the predictions in old geography books I found from the 80s are pretty much the right direction… First decision to eventually maybe cut down on nuclear was in 2002… We could probably have settled it by now. If it weren’t for stupid politics, big oil and gas lobbying and our politicians (to this day) trying to get hooked on energy from some wannabe dictators who (surprise) are going to blackmail us at some point.
I think the only sane option is to -at some point- get over it, look ahead and try to come up with a solution. And that’s a big investment into renewables, storage and the energy grid. So by now the first people we need to blame is everyone who isn’t en route towards a better future. I mean we can also blame Merkel. But that in itself isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Sure we are. But I reserve a special place for people who understand that we need to get off fossil fuels but can’t see that that is the most important energy choice of all, by several orders of magnitude, so that if you have the choice to do something else that might be a good idea in its own right, but it would make achieving that harder, you absolutely should not take that choice.
Hmmh. I mean there’s basically 2 options in the mid- and long-term. Renewables, and fusion energy (but we haven figured out that one, yet). Everything else is in limited supply. Oil and gas is predicted to last us for another 50 years, we got plenty coal, that’s a few 100(?) years and uranium is about 40 years until it gets proceedingly more expensive to dig it up. So we shouldn’t be investing in either of those more than we absolutely have to. Though I read maybe we can invent technology to pull uranium out of the ocean at a somewhat reasonable price.
Nuclear reactors are built with a lifespan measured in decades, not centuries, so investing in them when there are decades of economically viable fuel left is reasonable. I couldn’t find your 40 year number (I saw 230) but either way, it shouldn’t be a problem.
It will be a problem at some point, but not so that we should avoid it now.
That’s the numbers the German government came up with. But I keep reading roughly the same estimates in other publications as well: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/509082/5594603c3ecf27933ad76d31faf89c27/uran-als-kernbrennstoff-data.pdf (Edit: Seems that document is 20 years old 😳 I should probably dig for a more recent estimate. I believe we learned somewhat recently how there’s more uranium in Australia(?) than we thought?!))
I mean I guess if it is indeed 40-70 years… We’re looking at 5-10 years for all the planning and the permits… At the current construction timeframes we see in other countries, it’s another 15 years to build the thing. So if we decide to build nuclear power plants right now, it’s some 20-30 years until they start producing energy. And you’re certainly right, we need to look at the long-term picture in centuries, but also measure in decades. For reference, a nuclear power plant is good for about 40-50 years. On the upside, uranium ore isn’t the main cost of nuclear power. Even if it’s 3x or 5x as expensive as today, that’ll only make electricity like 1-2ct more expensive. But the downside is, we only have a few decades left until we definitely need to put in more effort, so that additional effort is going to cut into environmental impact, price and everything. And it also means another transitioning period of 20-30 years because we need energy in the next few years, and building them is slow. That’s then going to be fueled by yet more coal. Which isn’t great either.
I think everything has it’s time. But it doesn’t look to me like nuclear fission is the energy source of the future. At least not for Germany with our situation as is. It’d just be transitioning from one mid-term sustainable solution to another mid-term sustainable solution and spending money and more carbon dioxide to make it happen. But in the mid to long term, we need some kind of proper solution anyway. Something that’s cheap and doesn’t require constant digging up of finite resources. And by now we got the opportunity to go straight for that.