National Geographic’s article is titled “The controversial future of nuclear power in the U.S. As the climate crisis worsens, the discussion intensifies over what role nuclear power should play in fighting it.” Here’s an excerpt:
The status of existing [nuclear] plants has big implications: Including Indian Point, seven gigawatts of nuclear power are in danger of going offline before 2026 due to depressed electricity prices.
“Taking out nuclear power plants completely destroys gains with renewables,” Buongiorno says. When the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which produced about 8 percent of California’s electricity, closed in 2013, the local cost of electricity increased, and carbon dioxide emissions in California increased by 9.2 million tons the following year.
The MIT report found that in the next decade, the most cost-efficient, reliable grid comes from an energy mix. “Our analysis shows a big share of nuclear, a big share of renewables, and some storage is the best mix that is low-carbon, reliable, and at the lowest cost,” Buongiorno says.”
For a related recent post discussing the views of Mike Shellenberger, see here.
A current fact sheet on German (and global, by country) nuclear energy phase-out and flip-flop is this article: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-germanys-nuclear-phase-out#:~:text=Germany%20wants%20to%20curb%20greenhouse,going%20to%20be%20shut%20down.
Thank you, Andy. Interesting summary. My interest in this issues increased after reading Michael Shellenberger’s data concerning the rather short working life of solar, the amount of land required to bring it substantially more online nationwide and the toxic waste of the solar panels once they’ve reached the end of their productive life. See this link at Environmental Progress and here.
One of the advantages of being older than dirt is that I’ve seen most things at least twice. Let’s revisit the first of three Cassandra-level environmental emergencies, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Birds’ egg shells were thinner when they ate mosquitos killed by DDT. “Only we care about the environment. Anyone who does not agree with every aspect of our crusade is greedy and evil.” So, we did away with DDT. The bird’s eggshells are doing better, the only cost is half a million small brown children dying every year from preventable malaria.
The second emergency was nuclear power. “Only we care about the environment. Anyone who does not agree with every aspect of our crusade is greedy and evil.” We didn’t outlaw nuclear power, we made it so expensive to build and install that it couldn’t compete with coal plants, much better for the environment. Oops.
The third was global warming. “Only we etc” Dr. John Holdren was a major promoter of the global cooling threat, which could only be averted by turning all resources over to a central authority of wise people who would make all our decisions for us, thus global cooling might be avoided. Fast forward forty years, Dr. John Holdren was now Obama’s science advisor. He proclaimed that global warming was entirely due to humans burning fossil fuels, and described the only way to avoid catastrophe: Turn all resources over to a central authority of wise people who would make all our decisions for us, thus global warming might be avoided.
The science is not as simple as we pretend, and there is no consensus among scientists. I’m not a denier, I’m a skeptic. One thing that makes me suspicious is that it is child’s play to create a compelling case for immediate reduction in use of fossil fuels and their eventual elimination without ever mentioning global warming. Because of that case I support immediate reduction in use of fossil fuels and their eventual elimination. Yet, global warming enthusiasts reject my support because it’s for the wrong reason. That’s not science, it’s religion.